It was Clovelly beach on a sublime Saturday morning, the day after the Kangaroos had defeated the Kiwis at the SCG.
Madame Z was in the water, having her daily swim. I was chatting, as I do most days, with a good old boy, Keith, a former Randwick halfback in the dim distant past and a life-member of the Clovelly swimming club, where he’d been a timer for about 40 years or so.
We were talking about the important things in life, mainly sport. I told Keith I’d never seen a play like that put on by Greg Inglis when he leapt forward over the deadball line and batted the ball back over his head to Mark Gasnier to score.
‘He was feet in the air,’ Keith marvelled, ‘and he was precise about how he got the ball back for the try.’
We chatted about the Test and all the stuff that went with it. I told Keith that I was surprised at how big Norm Provan and Ron Coote were. ‘Even today they’d be big fellows,’ I told him.
Keith reckoned that they’d struggle a bit in skills with the youngsters going around now.
Somehow the conversation sequed to the famous St George side that won 11 straight premierships. I told Keith that I’d seen one of those St George sides play in the early 1960s. ‘Poppa’ Clay took my eye a bit, but the player who stood out was the centre, Reg Gasnier.
‘Gasnier seemed to have a turbo-charged acceleration when he got into a gap,’ Keith said. ‘Other fellows get into a gap and then are chopped down. But Gasnier stepped up a cog or two in his acceleration.’
As we were chatting in the hot sunlight, Bob McCarthy, one of the rugby league greats and a current Kangaroos selector, came down the steps ready to plunge into what Madame Z called the ‘two gasps’ water.
The barrel chest was as massive as in the days of his prime. He walked with an athlete’s rolling gait. He was as bronzed as a statue. He looked as if he could take the field right then and there and destroy the opposition.
‘We’re talking about Gasnier,’ I told him.
‘Mark or Reg?’ he asked.
‘Reg Gasnier.’
Bob McCarthy made his way to the concrete edge of the beach. He turned and said to us: ‘When I was about 17 or 18, they got me to mark Gasnier. When he got into a gap,’ McCarthy made a karate chopping motion with his hand, ‘swoosh, he was gone. Reg Gasnier was the greatest ever.’
And with that he dived into the sparkling waters of the bay.
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