When I was twenty, at the beginning of 1981, Mum was sicker than ever and had less than a year to live. About the only thing that was going well in my life was rugby league.
I’d been playing the game since I was eight or nine and living in Camperdown. At that time, Mum, realising I was growing into a strapping, sporty boy, took me to play with a South Sydney junior team called Mount Carmel.
The first day I ran out onto the field in Mount Carmel colours, I didn’t have a clue how to play league. Before the game I asked the coach what I was supposed to do and he said, ‘Get the ball and run as hard as you can at the guys in the other team.’ So I did, and I scattered them like ninepins. After one long run I looked to the sideline and all the Mount Carmel parents were cheering me. This wasn’t too bad. I was okay at this game.
By age sixteen when I was playing for my team Chelsea at Redfern Oval, I was big, a second-rower or prop, and could run and tackle with the best of them. Once when we were getting beaten 16–0, our coach suggested we put our rivals off their game by starting a fight – standard practice in those days. I did as I was told and I got sent off. The crowd flew into a rage and I was lucky to escape up the tunnel into the dressing room in one piece.
As well as Chelsea, I’d played in a number of local teams in the Eastern Suburbs, such as Bondi United, and coached a few, too.
At Bondi United I had a tremendous coach named Tony Moses. He was able to get the most out of my limited talents and help me play to my potential. Season 1980 was my most enjoyable in football, thanks to fellows like Tony Moses. Kerry Bilsborough, too. Kerry was a terrific footballer, small but with a lot of heart, pound for pound one of the best in the Eastern Suburbs, and he was a lovely bloke and a good friend. Somehow he missed selection in the President’s Cup rep team. I knew he was hurting about that. So when I was invited to play in the side I turned the selector down, in solidarity with Kerry. I regretted doing that then, and I regret it now. He was, however, in those days a bit of a ratbag. He managed to get himself banned from a number of pubs and clubs. I thought he was about to take a big fall, so I took it upon myself to have a heart-to-heart with him. I advised him to leave Sydney and make a new start. He took my advice, moved to Perth, and today he has a beautiful family, a good job, and owns his own house. He came across to Sydney recently and we caught up and he thanked me for giving him the tip to find some greener pastures. We also had a laugh about me declining a spot in the Eastern Suburbs President’s Cup team because I felt for him!
My dream of course was to play for the Eastern Suburbs Roosters. One day I thought my dream had come true. The phone rang at home and it was Russell Fairfax, the former great player and now first grade coach, on the other end of the line. ‘Dacky,’ he said, ‘how come you haven’t been at training?’
‘But no one told me,’ I spluttered. I thought Fairfax had obviously asked a friend to pass on the wonderful news to me and the friend had forgotten. If I ever got my hands on that bloke ...
‘Well,’ he continued, ‘we want you to come to training ASAP.’
When I picked myself up from the floor, I managed to stutter, ‘Why sure, Mr Fairfax … when … where … what gear do I bring?’
Suddenly I sensed some hesitation on Russell’s part. He said, ‘This is the Dack household, isn’t it?’
I said it certainly was.
‘And this is Stephen Dack I’m talking to, right?’
It broke my heart to tell him it wasn’t. It was his brother.
At the start of the 1982 season, just a month after Mum passed away, I was selected from the junior league to join the usual tribe of hopefuls and try out for the Roosters. Nothing was going to heal my broken heart, but I grasped the opportunity to move on and away from the tragedy.
About 170 of us turned up in an effort to be selected to wear the famous red, white and blue jersey.
One selection trial, a night match, was billed as a Possibles vs Probables game. In my team was a bunch of young blokes, all around twenty-one or younger, and we were up against a side filled with older hardheads, tough, brutal blokes, some of them with a decade of first grade experience behind them.
Fred Pagano was a short, nuggetty forward who in a long career had distinguished himself with the Cronulla Sharks, and had dealt out more than he ever copped in an especially rugged era of rugby league.
I really ripped in, trying to create a bit of mayhem in the forward exchanges. I lined up Fred Pagano and moved in fast to put a big hit on him. Fred saw me and the ball bobbled from his hands, which left one of his elbows free to collect me fair in the face. I went straight down as if shot. I had a split under my lip which took six stitches to close and another even bigger gash on top of my nose that also required stitching. I lay on my back on the turf and couldn’t figure out whether the lights up in the sky were from the night-lights or the fireworks that were exploding in my head.
I hauled myself to my feet and took a pass straight away from the dummy half and charged right into the teeth of the opposing forwards. They didn’t go easy on me just because I was hurt, and they smashed me again. I kept hitting the ball up and they kept smashing me.
I was still dazed and bleeding in the second half when I stood in a huddle with my blokes behind our goal-line as their kicker lined up to try to convert a try scored by one of their big backs. I didn’t know the try-scorer, so in my confused state I innocently asked my teammates, ‘Who is he?’ They took my comment the wrong way and thought I was putting the guy down. ‘Yeah!’ they all yelled. ‘Who is he? He’s no one! And the other blokes in their team are nobodies too! These guys are nothing to be afraid of. Who are they anyway? Nothin’ but a bunch of old has-beens. Let’s get back out there and really give it to ’em!’ I had inadvertently motivated our side. We went out again all fired up, and we won the match, although I wasn’t exactly in any mood, or condition, to celebrate at the final whistle.
When the match was over I staggered off the field; I was dazed and in agony. Fred Pagano came up to me. He didn’t apologise for what he’d done, but what he did do was much better. He shook my hand and said, ‘Good game, mate. You’re a tough kid.’ My aches and pains vanished. I was as proud as hell.
I showered and dressed and went to meet my girlfriend in a bar. My head was in such a mess she did not recognise me. I looked into the mirror behind the bar and I didn’t recognise me either.
Soon after that game, the final selection trial was played at Brookvale Oval, home of the Manly Sea Eagles. The original 170 aspirants had been whittled down to about fifty. The fifteen or so players who performed best that day at Brookie would win a contract with the Roosters.
When I look back on my life there have been a small number of days I’d rate as ‘perfect’. This was one. It was a beautiful, crisp, cool, blue-sky autumn day. If ever there was a day when I was going to play out of my skin it was that day – and I did. I looked up into the heavens and said, ‘ Thanks for today.’
When they were reading out the names of the successful players I was in a sweat. I felt like everything in my life hinged on whether I was in or out. It was as if all my self-esteem swung on the decision of the coaches. I heard ‘James Dack’ and I glowed with pride. The blokes who hadn’t made it slunk away in disappointment. I sat there on the grass and for the first time in what seemed an age I felt happy.
I played in Easts’ third grade for the rest of the season.
Rugby league was the sport for the kids who grew up in Woolloomooloo when we were there. It’s a full-on, ferocious and unforgiving body-contact sport that combines strength and toughness with speed and agility. Apart from boxing, it’s probably the closest thing to trench warfare.
A less fierce version of rugby league is touch footy. Down at the ’Loo when we were teenagers, we played in a touch footy side called the Woolloomooloo Warriors that was made up of local kids and a few ring-ins who could play. Our home ground was the expanse of grass near the Art Gallery of New South Wales at the Domain. Touch is rugby league without the collisions; even so, hard slaps on a bare back, stomach and legs, even heads, are tolerated, or they were in our comp. Sledging your opponent was also encouraged, and many a game of touch ended in a full-on brawl.
Every Sunday morning, whether you’d had an early night or been out on the soup, a group of blokes would go around the suburb banging on kids’ doors and yelling, ‘Get up! Get up! Touch is on! We need you! Outtabed!’ The fellow with the loudest voice would be Dom Squadrito. It was fantastic. I’d get up, whether bone-tired or hung-over, didn’t matter, and join the group. We’d play for two or three hours, in winter or in summer’s heat. Then we’d go for a swim down at the Boy Charlton Pool or just sit in the playground in Woolloomooloo and talk. After a midday sleep, we might meet again in the late afternoon for another game.
The Warriors were a gun side. Over the years we played together we won seven or eight competitions. Dom’s brother Frank was the captain. Dom was our best player. Yet another Squadrito cousin, Joe – who, as I’ve related, went on to play for the South Sydney Rabbitohs – occasionally played with us too. Jim Squadrito would videotape our games and I’d often supply the commentary, doing my best Rex Mossop impersonation.
One day we were aware of a new fellow hanging around our team. He was thin, dark-haired and had a moustache. Some of us recognised him from the previous season when he’d played for a side we’d beaten. He explained that he wanted to join us. Some of the blokes complained, ‘How come he’s down here? We don’t want him.’ But Jim Squadrito said, ‘He’s okay, he’s going to stay.’ The young man was focused and funny and fitted in well. He often talked about the power of positive thinking and how any of us could achieve anything in life if we wanted it bad enough. He and I and Steve became mates. His name was John McGrath, and he was just starting out in the real estate business. I didn’t know it then, of course, but McGrath would be the catalyst for my own career in real estate.