IN ANY CAREER of consequence, there are days that stand alone as makers or breakers of men. For Arthur Summons, the third Test of the 1962 series against England was such a day. It was his first game as Australian captain, and he took the field under threat. Summons had made a scheme of arrangement with the team management to defer banishment for having broken a team curfew a couple of nights before the game. It was a case of perform or else. Summons finished up man of the match. It was his third such award in three Tests of the series, making him Australia’s player of the year. He scored one try in that final game and had a large hand in another two. Australia won 18–17 against heavy odds. It was a day to remember.
ARTHUR SUMMONS
The subconscious is a powerful thing. Before that final Test my nervous energy was off the scale as I spoke to the team before the game. Our coach Harry Bath had spoken of tactics and strategies and ways to correct the errors of previous games. He had an amazing grasp of the intricacies of Rugby League, and he laid meticulous plans that gave maximum opportunity to every team he coached. I wanted to talk of other things. I didn’t really have a plan, I just talked. The words kept coming from somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, and the more they came the more I rose to them. In the end I was all fire and brimstone. When you get in a situation like that, and some inner combustion of the subconscious mind and nervous energy is at work, the words are very real. You can’t colour them or twist them or manufacture them to some particular purpose. They just pour forth, and they fall where they may.
I think I was trying to do two things before the emotion took over. I was trying to make the point that we had improved through the previous two Tests, having scored some very good tries, and that we could win this one if only we believed we could win it. I was also trying to make the point that our futures depended on it. Just get out there and give it to them. Sometimes those things work and sometimes they don’t. Different players respond to different things, but we had taken so many beltings from this English team I think just about everybody was ready to respond to some sort of call to arms. Blokes like John Raper always did. It didn’t take much to get him climbing the wall. But even some of the more studious members of the team responded this time, and as we took the field you could sense that this was going to be no ordinary performance.
We had some disruption to our team, especially in the backs. Reg Gasnier couldn’t play, so the selectors pushed our big winger Peter Dimond into the centres. Frank Drake was the third fullback of the series after Don Parish and Keith Barnes, and the Rugby Union international of the previous year, Jim Lisle, had come into the side at five-eighth with just a handful of Rugby League games behind him.
As we had in previous matches, we jumped out to a lead only to be overhauled and looking down the barrel in the second half. They led 17–11 with about ten minutes to go, and what a dramatic ten minutes it was. We had scored three tries, but without a top-class goal kicker in the side we had managed only the one goal.Then Kenny Irvine got another one to put us within striking distance.We threw everything at the Poms in those final minutes. I remember feeling that we were very competitive, and by no means did all seem lost. When I got the ball and made a break to the left, looking for Irvine, I thought we were a chance. I let the pass go and remember nothing more. Billy Boston had charged in from the wing, blindsided me, and caught me with one of his stiff-arm specialties. I went off on a stretcher, unconscious. I started to come to as we neared the sideline and remember our hooker Ian Walsh, chasing me and yelling. Something about not having any heart, and being a sook, and ‘Get off that bloody stretcher and come and help us.’ I staggered back.
There must have been no more than two or three minutes left. Again I broke towards Irvine’s wing.This time I saw Boston coming. I dummied and ducked and managed to get the ball to our prop Bill Carson, who I played with at Wests. Billy was a lightweight as props go, but he had a lion’s heart and he simply never stopped. He ran to Irvine’s wing, and as the Poms came at him he gave Ken the ball. With a bit of space and the line close, nobody was going to catch Ken Irvine, who at that time was probably the fastest winger on the planet. The Englishmen were up in arms as Irvine scored, claiming Carson’s pass was forward. There was a fairly wide consensus that it indeed might have been. But referee Darcy Lawler didn’t think so, and even if he did he wasn’t going to deny Irvine his try. That left us one point behind, a minute or two to play, and a kick from the sideline to win it.
I threw the ball to Irvine, who was none too impressed. ‘There’s no one else, mate,’ I told him. ‘Just kick it.’ Irvine lined it up in that toe-poke style that was the way goal kickers worked before somebody invented the round-the-corner style. It is probably fair to say nobody at the ground gave him much chance of kicking it. He lined it up and readied himself for the kick when Darcy Lawler intervened. The exact words seem lost in legend, but it was something like, ‘Mate, you’re lined up too far left. Move it a bit to the right.’ Irvine studied the ball and walked back to it. He made the adjustment as Lawler had suggested, struck it well, and it soared over the bar to give us an 18–17 win. It was one of the sweetest moments I have ever experienced, and against a side like that it was a mighty triumph.
I have enjoyed few games as I enjoyed that one. I made an early break to give our fullback Frank Drake a try . . . the first time a fullback had ever scored in a Test match. And I scored a try myself early on, but that was largely a result of pure fear. I had learned well from Noel Kelly and others about the subtle arts of scrummaging, and I was feeding the scrums in a way that gave Ian Walsh every chance and made it almost impossible for their hooker Bill Sayer to get anywhere near it. Darcy Lawler didn’t care, but as the count against Sayer mounted, Sayer certainly did. He called me for everything he could lay his tongue to, and when I responded with something very original like ‘bloody Pommy whinger’, he went feral. Whenever I got near the ball from that point all Billy Sayer wanted to do was to exhort all his mates to ‘get that little bastard’. His mates seemed very keen to oblige.
There came a point where it seemed they had me. As we moved the ball from the ruck, their lock Derek Turner had me lined up. Sayer was screaming at him, ‘There he is, Derek, get the little bastard,’ or words to that effect, and I knew the tackle would be meant to maim me if at all possible. Turner was a fiery and hugely effective lock forward. England always seemed to have one, as Vince Karalius of early tours proved, and Malcolm Reilly later on. But for the moment my problem was Turner. I couldn’t think of much else to do but respond to the terror I felt by jagging off my right foot, ducking at the same time, and getting out of there as fast as I could. I slipped between Turner and Sayer, and Billy Boston came in to cover me as I looked for Irvine on the wing. Boston seemed to hesitate, and momentarily I was lost, unable to find Irvine’s wing. Suddenly Irvine was beside me. ‘Put it down, mate,’ he said, ‘you’re over the line’.
It was not a happy match for Derek Turner. Not long into the second half, our front rower Dud Beattie dislocated his shoulder and had no hope of staying on the field. He was devastated at having to leave and reducing our numbers, so we came up with a plan. ‘See if you can take one of them with you,’ I suggested. As soon as play resumed, Beattie let fly a flurry of punches at Derek Turner for no apparent reason. It wasn’t easy, either, with one arm out of its socket and held against his body, and the pain obvious. Turner was taken by complete surprise but reacted as per script in those days by returning a flurry of punches at Beattie. Darcy Lawler sent them both off.
As soon as they started for the dressing room, Beattie clearly in great pain and assisted by a first aid man, Turner realised what had happened. He was furious. He tried to get at Beattie again, but Beattie was in no mood to fight, and the ambulance man helping him from the field became his protector. There was no doubt it helped us. A little earlier the English winger Mick Sullivan had chased Irvine about 20 metres to whack him, so he was sent off as well. It left them two short, or one shorter than us, since Beattie had left. In no way did that diminish the great feeling of euphoria that swept over us in the dressing room afterwards. The last thing we had wanted was to be the first Australian team to lose all three Tests to Great Britain.
The celebrations were long and genuine, and both our coach Harry Bath and manager Arthur Folwell were thrilled that we had achieved what we had. Nothing was ever said again about the three miscreants who had broken curfew at Manly and been threatened with dismissal from the team.We had lived up to our side of the bargain and produced a Test match performance of which everybody could be proud. Nobody was getting kicked out after that.We had turned a corner, and better deeds were yet to come.