1969 MANLY Rugby League World

eagle66

Bencher
At times a bi-monthly magazine.
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Thanks eagle66 those clippings take me right back to when I first discovered Manly and became a fan. I had watched on tv as we fell a whisker short in the 1968 decider and was excited to learn that we were signing McDonald and Thomson.
McDonald at the time was the heir apparent to immortal Reg Gasnier as Australia's premier centre. Possibly didn't quite play his best for us but kept getting picked to play Test matches and captained us in a grand final. I recall one televised club game (a rarity) in which he scored 4 tries . Usually forgotten in discussions of our best ever, but he was genuine quality, and tremendously fast.
Allan Thomson (spelled Thompson in the article) was a tough, low tackler who stuck around and helped win our first grand final.
Dennis Ward was a dazzling side-stepper and pretty good at the chip and regather, formed a brilliant halves pairing with Fulton.
A lot of my knowledge of those players was actually from reading and re-reading newspaper reports, and listening to Frank Hyde's radio commentary. Very few games were on tv and it wasn't till a year or 2 later I was able to actually get myself along to watch some matches!
 
Les Hanigan used to board with my Grandmother (father's side).

Met him several times; he only drank tea. Looked very young, small, not your typical footballer and allegedly someone commented once that he was a Kangaroo, as he did a tour with them.

The reply was "so was Skippy".
 
Some of those payments seems so small. I wonder if in the future they'll say that about the highly paid players of today? - Probably.

Thanks again @eagle66 So much history. I hope the MWRLFC have all the copies you have!
 
At times a bi-monthly magazine.
Thank you @eagle66 for posting all this history! I remember seeing many of these photos & articles at the time.

Great shot of zorba

Till I looked it up just now, I didn't know that Zorba's birth name was Panoutas Peterides 🙂

In 1969, during Zorba's first game against his former club, Parra, Dick Thornett was rucking the ball out on the 20 metre line, scoreboard end. When Zorba called for the ball, Thornett passed it to him & he gleefully ran in, untouched, for a try (I'm fairly sure we won the game).
 
The Greatest example to the The Greatest game of all
The one and only Incomparable Immortal and the Greatest player of them all !!!

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