IN THE HOURS AFTER the 1963 Rugby League grand final, the newsroom at the Sun-Herald office in Sydney was much like it was on any Saturday night. The hustle and bustle were everywhere as editions rolled out one after another and fleets of trucks gathered in the streets outside to take half a million papers to all parts of the state. Reporters clattered away on typewriters, editors and sub-editors pored over their work and planned layouts, and on the floor below banks of Linotype machines made a terrible din as they turned pots of molten metal into lines of type. This was an age before computers. Everything took time, and the urgency of the workers and the precision of their teamwork were a matter of routine.
John O’Gready, a photographer with a wild side to his nature and flair to match, had patrolled the Sydney Cricket Ground sideline all afternoon as St George and Western Suburbs did battle. It had been a miserable day, and the SCG had taken such a pummelling from three games of football that afternoon that it looked like an oyster lease. Robert Menzies was still Prime Minister, and Australia was such a conservative place that O’Gready did his afternoon’s work dressed in a suit. His shoes were clogged with mud and his trousers splattered, but he covered hundred of metres up and down the line looking for the perfect picture. Somewhere around 4:37 p.m., he got it. Full time had been called, the Saints had won again, and as the players traipsed from the field O’Gready found his magic moment.
Long before the arrival of the digital technology that allows photographs to be produced and transmitted in seconds, getting a photo into print was a tortuous process. The practice was to have a car and driver waiting to rush the film back to the Herald office in Ultimo. O’Gready made the delivery without any real idea of what he had, and the driver whipped the film over to the processing staff. When O’Gready later caught up with his negatives back at the darkroom, he picked out eight or so that he thought were the best of the day, printed them and passed them on to his editors for judgement. O’Gready’s favourite was a shot of a toothless Norm Provan caked in mud. Provan’s eyes and a couple of remaining teeth jumped from a black face, but the smile was clear and the emotion obvious. It was a powerful photo.
As O’Gready started to sell his choice, his pictorial editor, Graham Wilkinson, took one last look through the reject pile. He grabbed the photograph of the two captains in momentary embrace and said, ‘This is the pic.’ On the editorial floor, Jack Percival, one of the senior operatives of the time, went so far as to say it was the second-best photograph he had ever seen. In his mind the only one to beat it was the one of Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima in World War II, perhaps the most published news picture of all time.
Wests captain Arthur Summons had gone to Provan to congratulate him, as captains did at the end of the game. As Provan saw Summons coming towards him, he ripped off his jumper, baring the shoulder pads that gave the photograph its image of armour and lent weight to its eventual ‘Gladiators’ tag. Provan recalled being a little taken aback by the short exchange with Summons. Neither of them had any idea that O’Gready was lurking to immortalise it. The embrace was fleeting. O’Gready had only a couple of seconds to grab it, and the light was terrible. But just as the two captains came together, the clouds split momentarily, and a shaft of light hit the two muddied figures like some heavenly spotlight. Thus was born an image for the ages.
It was celebrated as depicting all that was fine about sport, and Rugby League in particular. A winner and a loser in recognition of each other; the big man and the little man on even terms; the spirit of a battle hard fought in tough conditions, yet celebrated for the joy of it; the mateship; the camaraderie of a hard game. The photo appeared next morning on page 3 of the Sun-Herald. O’Gready was disappointed it was not on page 1. The reality is that he was very lucky to get it.
In the 50 years since that photo was taken, Summons and Provan have revelled in the involvement it has maintained for them in a game to which they devoted a good part of their youth. It has brought them together as firm friends. Yet they still laugh about that famous embrace—and what they were actually saying.
ARTHUR SUMMONS
I don’t know that I have ever been more shattered than I was in the moments after that defeat. Wests had played grand finals against Saints in the previous two years as well and lost, and we figured we were a real good chance this time, since we had beaten them twice in the competition rounds and once in a semi-final. But we had a shocking deal from referee Darcy Lawler in that game, and I was furious. I went to Norm to congratulate him, but I don’t think I was very generous in what I said. It was something like, ‘You were lucky to get away with that, thanks to that bloody referee,’ or words to that effect.
It didn’t mean I lacked respect for what Saints had achieved. They were a fantastic side, and on a dry day we probably would not have got as close to them as the 8–3 result of that afternoon. And Norm himself was magnificent. He seemed to rise a couple of levels in grand finals. He was fabulous. But our conversation was more strained than the photo and the popular interpretation of it would suggest. I’ve mellowed since, of course. I now look upon that moment as one of the greatest of my life, given the way it was captured and what that has meant since.
As the years went by I delighted in challenging O’Gready about the photograph and the honours it had brought him. O’Gready was a knockabout bloke who loved a drink and a laugh, and I enjoyed his company. He won something like 500 pounds sterling for the photo in that international competition. I would stir him that Norm and I didn’t get a penny. ‘We posed there for hours,’ I would tell him, ‘and you won’t even buy us a drink.’ O’Gready would go into peals of laughter. And more often than not he would insist on buying a drink for longer than was good for either of us.
NORM PROVAN
It was normal practice at the end of a grand final for the captains to swap jumpers, so I had mine off ready to give to Arthur as we walked off. Arthur was pretty definite about it. ‘No, I don’t want it,’ he said. ‘I’m going to keep mine.’ I don’t particularly remember Arthur going crook about the referee. We had won, and that’s all I cared about. But as we have become good friends over the years on the back of that photo and the trophy that followed it, Arthur has had plenty to say about the refereeing that day. He never lets up. It’s all good-natured, but I think he is still hurting. I thought we won fair and square. I certainly don’t recall feeling that there was any doubt about it as we left the ground that day.
I didn’t know anything about the photo until years later. I was flying overseas and I pulled the Qantas magazine out of the seat holder. There it was on the cover, bold as you like, in sepia colour. I couldn’t believe it. I read in that magazine that it had won an international award—British Sports Photo of the Year, I think. I got to know John O’Gready quite well later on. I have come to love the photo and the friendship it has led to with Arthur. John O’Gready did me a very good turn.
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O’Gready was feted for his photograph of ‘The Gladiators’. It remains the most graphic sporting photo ever taken in Australia, and its renown was international. Some years after taking it, O’Gready found himself in a downtown sports bar in San Francisco, sitting alone with drink in hand. On the wall above him was a framed print of The Gladiators. He called the barman over to take due credit. ‘See that picture,’ he said. ‘I took that.’ The barman, of course, had heard it all before. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Drink up, buddy, and I’ll get you another.’
Along with all the plaudits, O’Gready’s life had its share of tragedy. Driving home from a party one night in the late 1960s, he ran into the back of a truck and suffered life-threatening injuries. He lost an eye, and though he recovered to work at the Sun and the Sydney Morning Herald until their parent company was privatised in 1988, he never quite recaptured the glories of his days on the sideline, when he used to plough through the mud with the enthusiasm of a zealot, looking for the magic shot. He died in 1999, aged just 62. The indelible legacy that he left was ultimately sculpted into the trophy presented to the premiership-winning team at every grand final. It has been thus for 30 years, perpetuating the events of a grey afternoon long ago, when a shaft of light fell just right, and two muddied footballers symbolised the best of their sport.