Three weeks ago, I took advantage of the holidays to slip up to my old home town of Orange and visit a few rugby mates. I spent a couple of days with Des Taylor, a relentless flanker who played with Wallabies David Codey and James Grant for Orange City and Central West in the 1980s and 90s.
One evening, we ventured from his grazing property to the neighbouring hamlet of Spring Hill for a few quiet beers with the “old fellas.”
The “old fellas” are a group of elderly rugby aficionados who gather twice a week at the Spring Hill Tavern for an hour of punchy middies interspersed with rapid-fire repartee. It is always one of the highlights of the holidays, but this time it was tinged with disappointment, as one of the regulars was missing.
For years, a critical member of the panel was one William John “Bill” Gunther, a publican’s son from Bathurst who was educated at St josephs College and later Wagga Ag College, where he was known as “Gundy”.
Upon moving to Orange in 1953 he played for Orange Emus with fellow Test players Don Strachan and Bruce Wells, but then found his home at Molong where he played and coached from 1954 to 1961. Under Gunther, the newly formed Molong club won the Central West premiership in their first year.
It was also from Molong that Gunther was selected for Central West, NSW Country, NSW and finally Australia, playing one Test against the All Blacks in Brisbane in 1957, and playing 15 tour matches with the Fourth Wallabies in 1957/58.
Bill Gunther in his prime was a tremendous character with a wicked sense of humour.
Back in the day, he was also one of Australian rugby’s hardest forwards in an era when the Wallabies weren’t particularly noted for their forward power. Former Wallaby, Wallaby coach and ARU president Bill McLaughlin once described Gunther as “pound for pound, probably the most devastating tackler ever to play for Australia”, a significant accolade coming from a man who had witnessed ruthless backrow talent of the like of John Thornett, Jules Guerassimoff, Greg Davis and Kevin “Kandos” Ryan, so nicknamed after the famous brand of cement.
Gunther’s frightening physicality was unfortunately not balanced by a great deal of subtlety, and his wild streak counted against him in tight matches, as did his lack of pace. Jack Pollard in his epic “Australian Rugby – the game and the players” noted that Gunther’s “lack of guile showed in many of his tour appearances” and that he “was more at home on the heavier pitches”, but his spirit and undoubted courage were enough to displace Charles “Chilla” Wilson for his Brisbane Test.
Heavier pitches may have been Gunthers preferred abode in the UK, but there was nowhere that he was more at home than in the paddocks around Orange, being as Pollard described him, “a real bushie”. With his quick smile and nasal laugh, Bill was equally happy making the jokes, or being the butt of them.
Occasionally he was an easy target, sometimes he was the architect of the elaborate sting. Other times he was just full of great stories.
One of the best concerned his erstwhile teammate Neil “Noodles” Adams.
Adams was, like Bill, a Joeys boy and a one Test Wallaby, hailing from the working class town of Newcastle where he worked in the breweries and played front row for the Merewether club. Bill loved “Noods”.
Once after a NSW Country match, the young Bill was matching the older, more experienced Noods schooner for schooner, when they incurred the wrath of some fellow drinkers. A brief scuffle and subsequent evaluation of the odds, left them in no doubt that the smart choice was to vacate the premises, which they did at pace.
Footsteps clattered down the street as the hunters pursued the hunted for several blocks. Finally, as they neared exhaustion and their options evaporated, Bill and Noods began to contemplate an inevitable beating, when suddenly salvation loomed in the form of a vacant lot surrounded by a ramshackle paling fence.
Showing enviable footwork for a big man, Noodles stepped nimbly through a gap in the fence and hauled Gunther with him, growling “In here young fella”. Crouching near the gap, listening to the baying pack get closer, Bill described the dark look that crossed Noods’ face as he wrenched a paling from the fence. The footsteps arrived. A brief conference, then a curious head appeared through the hole, at which point Noodles broke the paling over it.
He then stepped over the prone body back onto the footpath, with the half-paling and its accompanying tufts of hair still in his grasp. Grinning evilly, he addressed the backpedalling mob. “Righto” he leered. “’oo’s next?”.
The inimitable Noodles died in the late 1980’s and it was around this time that Bill became conscious of the need to maintain his fitness. Seeking advice from his GP, Bill was advised to take a brisk walk for 30 minutes a day, whereupon he began appearing at the pub in the evening in an old tracksuit with a frayed towel around his neck, having just completed the required constitutional.
One afternoon, one of the regulars asked how the training was going. “Goin’ great!” snorted Bill. “I just finished a 30 minute walk in 20 minutes!” Followed by the honking laugh “Haaa!”.
The laugh was a Gunther staple, and it didn’t matter whether he was the joker or the jokee, it was always recognizable despite the size of the crowd.
One memorable afternoon, Bill ambled into the pub with an incredible anecdote which had just taken place in a paddock near Blayney. As he drove around assessing a mob of lambs for sale, Bill’s carphone rang. A voice came on the line long distance and enquired politely for a name Bill didn’t know. In typical Gunther style he snorted and droned “Naaaaaa see – ya got the wrong num-baah”.
After several seconds silence a tentative voice asked “Is that you Bill?”. The caller was one of Bill’s old Queenslanda rugby mates who had indeed keyed in the wrong number, but upon hearing the inimitable tones at the far end knew exactly who it was – 30 years later.
The ever present phone was the Gunther weapon of choice in his own stings. In the mid 1990’s I arrived in Goulburn as a young cattle auctioneer and keen rugby player. After about two weeks, I received a phone call one day from a rather plummy Goulburn Post reporter going by the nondescript name of Bob Gray.
“Is this Andrew Logan?” he enquired in the lofty tones of a Fleet Street scribe. I answered that it was and he asked if I would mind answering a few questions. Goulburn had a promising rugby side he said, and as such the town was always interested in new players who might help them win a flag. The interview ranged far and wide from my rugby beginnings (humble), to my representative history (minimal) and eventually my career goals in rugby (I wasn’t even sure I had a “career”).
His admiration was so relentless that eventually I began to swell just a little bit, at which point the fictional Bob Gray could contain himself no longer and snorted down the phone with a goose-like honk that could belong to only one man. “Haaa!” he giggled. “It’s Bill!”.
That’s the way I like to remember Bill Gunther.
Unfortunately none of us remain young forever. A few years ago, Bill and his daughter Ann-Margaret were involved in a head on collision on the Pacific Highway, en route to Nelson Bay for holidays. Both escaped serious injury, but Bill was undoubtedly shaken.
Not too long after, he left his car door open as he alighted to cross a road in Newcastle one dark, wet night. A young female driver innocently happened upon the open door as she rounded a bend and swerved to miss it, hitting Bill as he crossed the road.
His old playing foes in the 1950’s would have undoubtedly laid money at evens on Gunther vs Moving Vehicle, but for a man in his late sixties the odds had lengthened considerably, and Bill was seriously injured.
Physically he has recovered pretty well, but now resides in a nursing home in Orange, close to his mates and the town he knows so well. When I spoke to Ann-Margaret today she said he still has the famous, tough Gunther constitution. But his mind is not what it used to be and he gets vague and forgetful a lot of the time. “Occasionally though” she said “You still get a bit of the old spark”.
She related how over Christmas she had bought a bunch of flowers for Bill to give to the nurses. As any man would under strict orders from his eldest daughter, he dutifully trekked round to the nurses station and handed over the blooms, triggering a chorus of oh-aren’t-they-lovely’s from the assembled throng.
Never one to miss an opportunity on the rugby field or in the sale-yards, Bill waited till the admiration reached its zenith and then pounced.
“Glad you like ‘em – now you won’t mind if I have a cigarette will you?”
Happy New Year Bill.
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