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Watching super mare Black Caviar romp to her 20th successive win last Saturday, my thoughts locked onto the ever-growing historical significance of this amazing animal and where it will finish in the annals of Australian sport.
Will someone make a movie about this modern day Phar Lap?
With every win, I guess it is looming as a real possibility. There is an unmistakeable romance about the racetrack and its equine royalty. The recent success of the Damien Oliver-inspired The Cup shows there is always room for a high quality, Australian sports film.
Why not a film specifically about rugby league? As we’ve seen with thoroughbred racing, league has so much to offer with its rich tapestry of drama, human resilience, personalities and controversy.
Only a handful of movies have been made about the 13-a-side code. Sure, we’ve had Matt Nable’s excellent The Final Winter (2007) and Khoa Do’s successful battler flick Footy Legends (2006).
These were essentially works of fiction and I wondered what real life storylines writers might consider for mass enjoyment up on the silver screen.
To my mind, the late, great South Sydney fullback, Clive Churchill would be a terrific subject of a rugby league themed movie.
The history books show the man dubbed The Little Master was a brilliant footballer with and without the ball. Heroic – well, they don’t come more so than this guy.
In a premiership game against Manly in 1955, Churchill played with a broken arm cradled in a cover of an exercise book.
There were no replacements in those days and the Rabbitohs needed to win to make the semis.
In the dying seconds, Churchill waved aside the protests from his team mates to pot a goal from the sideline, giving them a 9-8 win. Souths went on to win the premiership.
(And they called Greg Hartley ‘Hollywood’ …)
Let’s go further back – way back – to the player who pretty much pioneered rugby league, Herbet Henry ‘Dally’ Messenger.
A centre with freakish try-scoring and goal-kicking talents, Messenger had a flair for the unorthodox and wowed crowds wherever he played in league’s infant years 1908-13.
One of his goals, on a Kangaroo tour in England, was landed from the sideline on his own 25-yard line! That kick was mentioned in early versions of the Guinness Book of World Records measuring over 80 yards (73m).
Some of the code’s more contemporary characters also loom as fascinating movie studies.
How would King Wally Lewis or the larger-than-life, Artie Beetson stack up? Or super coaches Jack Gibson and Wayne Bennett?
There are eras in the game such as St George’s mighty 11 year reign and Parramatta’s brilliant run of the early Eighties when Messrs Sterling, Kenny, Price and Grothe were box office smashes in their own right.
The Super League war would surely make for absorbing viewing.
Heck, there was enough skullduggery, subterfuge and two-timing done then to put the bulk of those Underbelly episodes in the shade.
There were powerful, ruthless figures wheeling and dealing on both sides of that war and the ensuing bitterness has yet to be washed down the grubbiest sporting sinkhole ever seen in this country.
Newcastle’s maiden premiership win in 1997 had a touch of fairytale about it with a late, late try by Darren Albert against favourites Manly Warringah. Residents of the steel city had been in rock bottom spirits because of an earlier announcement that BHP would be closing down.
The Newcastle players that day became real-life Knights in blue and red armour.
These are a few league stories that sprang to my mind. I wonder what our imaginative, league-loving ROAR readers think could one day be seen in cinemas here and quite possibly, abroad.
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