There is plenty of nostalgia this week, with South Sydney Rabbitohs playing their first grand final since 1971.
It was a good year as I recall, being 15 I was just awakening to the fact that there was another half of the human race that was quite fascinating. In fact, they would soon have me obsessed!
But with this week’s grand final fast approaching, there is another year worth mentioning – 1967. This was the year that Souths and the Canterbury Bulldogs last played each other in a grand final.
It was the first of five successive grand finals for Souths, winning all of them bar the middle one – 1969.
The mind works like a louvre shutter, the dark secreting some memories forever. But other memories glow in the light, as if they occurred just yesterday.
1967 was a fascinating year in many ways, with the war in Vietnam accelerating in tempo and viciousness and being beamed into TV sets around the globe – “the TV war”, they called it.
In rugby league itself, a great deal occurred. The mighty St George run of 11 successive grand finals and premierships came to a halt in the preliminary final against Canterbury.
It was a match that had fans spellbound. With no St George in the grand final, the game suddenly had a freshness about it. A new champion would be declared for the first time since 1955.
It was also the first grand final to be telecast live. Ground attendances were going through the roof, and it appears the new ‘four tackle’ rule, introduced that season, had a lot to do with a more invigorating game.
Also in 1967, two new teams were added to the competition – Penrith and Cronulla-Sutherland – bringing the number of participants to 12.
The mighty Dragons centre Reg Gasnier, in his last year of football, was the Kangaroos captain, and while St George didn’t make the grand final, they were minor premiers, and Gasnier was surrounded by a stack of teammates in the national team – Johnny Raper, Graeme Langlands, Billy Smith, Johnny King and Elton Rasmussen.
But before we continue with rugby league, what else was happening in sport in Australia and overseas in 1967?
Our cricketers had returned from South Africa, losing a series for the first time in the republic. Bobby Simpson was our test skipper but he would be replaced at the end of the year by his vice captain and fellow opening partner Bill Lawry.
Apparently Simpson had been offered five times as much money to report on the 1968 Ashes tour than to play.
Wicketkeeper Barry Jarman was the third senior player. Our best bowler was fast man Graham McKenzie, while exciting young bat Doug Walters missed two years of major cricket due to national service as a soldier.
Our Wallabies had also returned from the northern hemisphere chastened after winning only two of five internationals. A team that had left the previous year with so much hope had returned deeply disappointed.
Skipper John Thornett retired, passing the captaincy to the team’s best player, Ken Catchpole, who had a wonderful partnership with flyhalf Phil Hawthorne.
Other stars of the Wallabies were Jim Lenehan, Dick Marks, John Brass, Greg Davis, Peter Johnson and veteran tight forwards Tony Miller and Rob Heming. Many of the key players would be gone within 12 months – either retired or enticed to rugby league, as Australian rugby descended into another era of mediocrity.
In Australian football, both Richmond and Carlton were on the rise. The Tigers would win the 1967 grand final and win five premierships from seven appearances between 1967-80.
The Blues had pinched the best player of the times, Ron Barassi, from Melbourne as their new captain-coach, and they would go onto win six premierships from eight appearances between 1968-82.
In association football (soccer), the beginning of the modern game in Australia can be traced from this year. Certainly the core of the fabled 1974 Socceroos to qualify for the World Cup began their long trek on a tour of war-torn Vietnam. Their journey is a story in itself. 1974 legends Johnny Warren, Ray Baartz, Atti Abonyi, Ray Richards and Manfred Schaefer all came together on this tour.
1967 was John Newcombe’s breakout year in tennis, annexing both Wimbledon and US titles. Roy Emerson won the Australian title, while Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall dominated the professional tournaments.
It would be the following year before the amateurs and professionals came together in the modern Open era. Australia beat Spain 4-1 in the Davis Cup at the end of the year, with Emerson, Newcombe and Tony Roche comprising the team.
Dame Pattie was trounced 4-0 in the America’s Cup by Intrepid, but Australia’s sailing pride was restored in the Admiral’s Cup races in the English Channel where its three yachting entries – Mercedes III, Caprice Of Huon and Balandra – secured victory for Australia.
The Sydney to Hobart ocean classic was won by the French boat Pen Duick III, which also finished second in the handicap section.
In horse racing, Red Handed gave new training maestro Bart Cummings his third successive Melbourne Cup victory, while champion galloper Tobin Bronze won the prestigious double of the Caulfield Cup and Cox Plate (again).
With little acclimatisation, Tobin Bronze then ran a gallant third in the Washington Laurel International Stakes, then the richest race in the world.
Earlier in the year, Tobin Bronze and Cummings’ champion stayer Galilee had thrilled racegoers in a series of head-to-head clashes in Melbourne. Both horses went to Sydney but avoided each other.
Tobin Bronze won the Doncaster Hcp and Galilee won the Sydney Cup before going lame, both horses carrying big weights to victory.
Champion jockey George Moore had a hoot on a short working holiday in England, claiming both the Epsom Derby, and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes aboard Royal Palace.
1967 saw the first NFL Superbowl played, with Green Bay Packers etching their name into history. The Tour de France was won by Roger Pingeon, when Frenchmen still actually won their own major cycling event!
Perhaps the big local news item of 1967 was the disappearance of Prime Minister Harold Holt off Torquay beach in Victoria on 18 December. Apparently Holt was trying to show off in front of a couple of daughters-in-law by going skin-diving in rough seas. He probably drowned and his body was never recovered.
The Apollo space program, which landed the first man on the moon, began disastrously when the three crewmen of Apollo One died in a fire on the launch pad during a training exercise.
Elvis married his Priscilla on the first of May. The Beatles brought out their hippie album, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
This was the anti-war, anti-establishment, flower-power era and a huge international pop festival was held in Monterey, California.Hair, the musical, also premiered in this year.
Top songs in Australia included ‘This Is My Song’ (Petula Clark), ‘Snoopy versus The Red Baron’ (The Royal Gaurdsmen), ‘I’m A Believer’ (The Monkees), ‘Green, Green Grass Of Home’ (Tom Jones) and a brace of Englebert Humperdinck hits, ‘The Last Waltz’ and ‘Please Release Me’.
Normie Rowe was named King of Pop, while we were introduced to Johnny Farnham singing his first big hit, ‘Sadie’. Rolling Stone magazine made its debut.
In Melbourne Tonight dominated local content, fronted by Graham Kennedy. This Day Tonight premiered on ABC, along with Bellbird.
TV was dominated by American sitcoms (The Beverly Hillbillies, The Addams Family, Get Smart) and British sitcoms (Steptoe and Son, The Carry On series), cartoons (The Flintstones, The Bugs Bunny Show) and Westerns (Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Rawhide). There was plenty!
There was a fair dinkum Bond movie, You Only Live Twice with Sean Connery, and a spoof, Casino Royale with David Niven. I actually thought Niven was the best Bond, although his role was unofficial.
Movies reflected their time, from the war-related The Dirty Dozen, the historical A Man For All Seasons and Camelot, the crime flicks Bonnie And Clyde and Cool Hand Luke, to a stack of social commentary movies, To Sir With Love, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, The Graduate, etc.
The Oscar for best movie was In The Heat Of The Night, another social commentary movie. Best actor awards were picked up by Rod Steiger and Katherine Hepburn.
And so back to rugby league. The two teams that took the field in the 1967 grand final were as follows:
Souths
Kevin Longbottom, Mike Cleary, Eric Simms, Bobby Moses, Brian James, Jimmy Lisle, Ivan Jones, John Sattler (c), Elwyn Walters, john O’Neill, Bob McCarthy, Alan Scott, Ron Coote.
Canterbury
Les Johns, Clive Gartner, Bob Hagen, Johnny Greaves, Barry Reynolds, Bob Doyle, Ross Kidd, Kevin Ryan (c), Col Brown, Merv Hicks, Kevin Goldspink, George Taylforth, Ron Raper.
Souths was coached by their legendary champion Clive Curchill, while Ryan doubled as captain-coach for Canterbury.
Souths won 12-10, scoring two tries to none in a tight, compelling contest. McCarthy scored an intercept runaway try over 80 metres, while O’Neill barged over from dummy half.
Simms kicked three goals for Souths, while Taylforth kicked four for Canterbury, with Raper adding a field goal.
Controversy erupted post-match when it was believed a long-range penalty attempt by Longbottom was incorrectly disallowed. Fortunately, this decision didn’t affect the outcome of the match.
The next day, the following players from the grand final would be named in the Kangaroos tour of Engalnd and France – Sattler, Walters and Coote (Souths) and Johns, Greaves and Goldspink (Canterbury). McCarthy was a shock omission.
The tour would prove to be a troubled one. While the Roos beat Great Britain 2-1, they lost to France 0-2 with one draw.
The players made headlines for misbehaviour in public and the tour was dubbed ‘The man with the bowler hat’, when it was alleged an Australian player was seen walking in the street late at night wearing nothing but a tour tie and bowler hat. Vice-captain Johnny Raper dined out for decades as the supposed culprit, but eventually the real man came forward, it being tough prop Dennis Manteit.
That was the year that was in 1967 (just some of it). May the best team win this coming Sunday.
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