Fair Game by Steve Cannane

Author:Steve Cannane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL

A HUGE ROAR FROM across the road startled Joe Reaiche as he tried to get to sleep. ‘What in the hell was that noise?’1 he called out to his younger brother Tony, with whom he shared a room in his family’s Redfern terrace. Joe got no response. His brother had already passed out. There was only one way to find out what was going on. Joe peeled back his cotton sheets and leaped out of bed.

As the eight-year-old peered out the window of the third-floor attic at 68 Redfern Street, he could see floodlights shining in the distance. The oval he mucked around on after school, playing scratch games with his mates, had been transformed into an arena full of people, energy and noise.

Young Joe changed out of his pyjamas and crept down the stairs, sneaking past the rooms his parents leased out to itinerant men for ten bucks a week. He slowly opened the front door, making sure his father knew nothing of his escape. He crossed the street and raced through the park. The sprawling Moreton Bay fig trees, the ancient Canary Island palms and assorted flooded gums of Redfern Park swayed over him as he sprinted through the park urged on by the roar of the crowd. He soon arrived at the source of all that noise, a tribal gathering that would change his life forever.

Redfern Oval was home to the champion rugby league side the South Sydney Rabbitohs. In 1908, a rugby league competition formed in Sydney as a breakaway from the amateur sport of rugby union. Players were disillusioned that the governing body would not pay compensation for injuries and lost wages. A professional competition was set up and South Sydney was one of its foundation clubs.

Rugby league became Sydney’s most popular and most brutal winter sport. Its clubs were built around tightly knit working-class communities like Redfern. The players were made up of tough uncompromising men drawn from the docks, the mines, the building sites and other blue-collar industries. The Rabbitohs got their nickname from footballers who earned extra money on a Saturday morning walking the streets of Redfern and Surry Hills, skinning and selling rabbits to the large impoverished families crammed into rows of terraces and workers’ cottages.

On the hot February night when Joe Reaiche broke out of his bedroom and raced across the road to Redfern Oval, the Rabbitohs were at the peak of their powers. They had already won 16 premierships, and would claim another four titles in the next five years. Souths were playing the Balmain Tigers in the first game of the 1967 Preseason Cup. Joe did not have the five cents needed to get through the turnstiles, but that did not matter. He peered through a hole in the fence, catching a glimpse of the Rabbitohs team that contained legends such as Eric Simms, Bob McCarthy, Ron Coote and John Sattler. Young Joe was mesmerised.

When his nerve gave out and he headed for home, Joe found his father waiting outside the front door.

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