IT IS A WORRYING side effect of today’s highly professional game that too many players find themselves stranded when playing days are done. Rugby League is a game for young men. It is also a ferociously physical contact sport. On both counts it is available to its participants for only a small fraction of an average life—and smaller today than it was in Norm Provan and Arthur Summons’ time, when the physical power of the game was less refined. What players do once football is finished is a question that is increasingly relevant. Not everybody can be a coach or a commentator. For Provan and Summons it was never a problem. Everybody worked while they were playing, anyway, and everybody knew a working life had to continue long after they stopped. Both Summons and Provan made sure they thought it through, and both became successful businessmen.
NORM PROVAN
Life after football was never going to be a problem for me. I had worked hard away from the game throughout my football career, as we all did, and there was never any thought that we would do any differently once football stopped. I spent a lot more time involved in that than I did in my role as captain– coach of the Saints. There was nothing unusual about that. And although I had a few coaching stints afterwards, my business still was the overriding involvement of my working life. That kept me busy until I left Sydney with my wife Lindy in 1979 and took over a caravan park in Cairns.
The Moon River Caravan Park gave Lindy and me the chance to do some innovative things.We introduced an en-suite arrangement for each of the caravan spots so people could hook up to a private bathroom when they parked their caravans. It meant a bit of an investment, but it paid off in spades. It produced a whole new level of convenience for caravan travellers, and it brought us plenty of business. It was hard work but rewarding work, and we stuck at that for nearly 20 years. For half a dozen of those years we also branched out into a bit of cattle farming. We bought 200 acres of land at Kuranda, in far north Queensland, built a house and farmed about 120 head of beef cattle. I didn’t know much about it when we started, but you learn quickly, and it was an enjoyable life in the great outdoors.
In 1990, having sold the caravan park and the land at Kuranda, we moved to the Sunshine Coast and started to develop the Oasis Resort at Caloundra. This was a fabulous property in a wonderful part of the world. We had 48 rooms in the first stage, and by the time we had built that up to 110 rooms, with a function centre, events facilities and the rest, it was a very big part of the Caloundra tourist scene. In the late 1990s, when Rod Macqueen had taken over the Wallabies, he set up a home away from home with the team and their families, and they stayed with us for long periods. They trained nearby and looked after themselves, trying to make family life as normal as possible, and it was a great thing to see the wives and the kids enjoying a footy environment along with the players. John Eales was the captain, and people like Matt Burke, George Gregan and Stephen Larkham were all in the team. I liked to think our resort played its part in making that team the side that it was. It won the Bledisloe Cup handily against New Zealand, won the 1999 World Cup, and was top of the world Rugby tree for quite a few years.
We sold the Oasis in 2012, kept three of the units, and moved up to the hills above the Sunshine Coast, where we built a house at Mooloolah. We have done quite a bit of property development over the years. We built apartment blocks at Caloundra and Maroochydore, and we had a restaurant–café at Maroochydore as well. We had a pub at Hervey Bay for a while, and a land subdivision at Tanawha, and it has all kept us very busy for a very long time. It is fair to say we had a go. There has been a lot of risk involved, a fair whack of debt, and no shortage of pressure, and we have had our setbacks. But there has been a great sense of achievement that has gone with it all as well. I am very lucky that Lindy has been such a great support. She has been the brains of the operation, and has worked hard on all the detail that development of this sort requires.
My three sons—Noel, Doug and Nathan—are all near us in Queensland now. Noel and Doug played a bit of football in Sydney, and Noel got as far as Cronulla seconds, but my career undoubtedly weighed on them. It is never easy for the sons of the father. My daughter Suzie is still in Sydney, and we have six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, all of whom are a great blessing to us. I look back on football these days as a very important part of my life but not the only part. I am remembered as a footballer, and the Gladiators trophy and all that has gone with that has kept the memory alive. But I have always tried to keep all that in perspective. I have had a good working life, a good family life and a good sporting life, and I am lucky that they have blended so well together.
ARTHUR SUMMONS
Football has given me a lot of recognition through life, and loads of friends, and I am grateful for the many privileges that it has brought me. But the fact is my work has always steered my life. I left Sydney within a few months of leading the Kangaroos to Britain to take on a job that looked like it might last. As I completed my football life in Wagga Wagga, it was my employment as general manager of the leagues club that occupied most of my time, and we still live in the town. When I was first selected for Australia I turned up late to camp at Manly before a Test against England because I didn’t want to leave work early. I was a schoolteacher, and just leaving was not something you could responsibly do. The coach, Harry Bath, was not happy. But my work ethic told me then, as it has always told me since, that having a job carries certain commitments.
I probably overdid it in my time at Wagga Leagues, working longer hours than is conducive to a balanced life. But I didn’t feel I could half do it as the club continually expanded and became the social centre of the town. It was a big responsibility for a 27-year-old ex-teacher, moving from a kids’ classroom to an adult playground. But I took it very seriously. It has always been that way. We looked for other opportunities to do things as a family, and when we found something we could work at, we made sure we worked at it hard. We got into the hotel game in Wagga, and my wife Pam and our son David and daughter Janine, took on hefty responsibilities in running the pubs while I was still involved at the leagues club. We bought the freehold on the Imperial hotel in town and renovated it. It was a haven for sportsmen and families. It was incident free and had a friendly and inviting atmosphere that made it successful. Pam took the licence on that because I was still at the club and David was a week or so too young, but we could only let her run it in the daytime. At night, when the wives rang up wondering where their husbands were, our practice was to be very vague lest we got them into trouble. Pam would simply announce, ‘He told me not to tell you, but, yes, he’s here,’ or put the miscreant on the phone, or give him a bit of a tongue-lashing and send him home. She was emptying the place out and costing us a fortune, but she won a lot of respect from the womenfolk around town.
David did a wonderful job running the Imperial and improving its value. When it got too much for Pam and the kids, we leased it out and took on a new lease at the Kooringal pub with a partner, Geoff Perryman, who took on the licence. Finally we bought the Tolland in the ‘suburbs’ of Wagga in partnership with Dave Emanuel, an old mate of mine who had played in the second row on our Wallaby tour back in 1957. It was a good business, a nice hotel in a good part of town, and again it became a popular spot for families and their celebrations. My daughter Janine ran it for us as licensee, and it was very much a family affair in which we all helped. It was an exciting time. At one stage we sponsored the Wagga Gold Cup, which was a real carnival in Wagga. We eventually sold the Tolland to a hotel group that leased it to Woolworths, and it is part of the huge Woolworths pub operation today.
Through all of this, family was very important to Pam and me. We have five very good kids—David, Gillian, Catherine, Janine and Kellie—and all of them had an inclination to sport. David was a very good swimmer early on but had to stop when he started to get bad ear infections. I can still remember the excitement when he broke 60 seconds in the 100 metres for the first time as a kid. The girls were into hockey, softball, netball, volleyball and touch football. Kellie was also a very good gymnast. She could wind her body into knots that used to make me wince. Janine reached national standard in both hockey and softball, and was on the cusp of the Olympics at one stage. But being good at both didn’t help her in an age of growing specialisation.
Our second child, Gillian, was a great soulmate for Pam and a fantastic girl. Pam and I were out to dinner one night in 1994 when Gillian rang to tell us she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was booked in to have her breast removed. I can hardly begin to describe the shock of that phone call and the heartbreak that followed. Gillian had the operation and began a chemotherapy program, and for a time she looked so well. Her attitude was always positive. Six weeks after her last chemo treatment, she fell pregnant with twins. But it soon became clear that Gillian’s cancer had spread to her bones and the chemotherapy was not going to effect the cure we all were hoping for. Gillian made the decision that she would carry the twins until somebody told her it was critically unwise to do so for the babies’ sake. At the same time, she had to think about their care. When Pam asked Gillian how she would like them raised, she said simply: ‘You’ll know what’s best, Mum.’
Jagan and Jali—a boy and a girl—were born without problem, two beautiful babies who today, as teenagers, remain beautiful people. Gillian was unmarried, and the babies’ father agreed to grant us custody. Our daughter Catherine agreed to raise them. Our son David lives nearby in Sydney so he lends a hand, and the kids have had as much loving attention as any kids could want. Gillian died at noon on December 22, 1996, eight months after the twins were born. She was 35. It was our 40th wedding anniversary, and every anniversary since Gillian died has been tinged with sadness. But we still marvel at her courage, and the joy that she had brought us, even in the darkest days. Catherine and David have done a wonderful job with the kids. Their Dad comes to see them every so often, and Pam and I delight in going to Sydney for their school events and their sport, or just to see them. The kids love their sport. Jagan is quite a talented basketballer and golfer, with hand–eye coordination that is the mark of all good sportsmen. Jali has the same natural gifts, and is keen on soccer and volleyball. It is true that great joy can grow out of the darkest sadness.
These days we live quietly, still in Wagga and still thankful that the Magpies stalwarts Jack Murphy and Arthur Dixon gave us the opportunity to come here back in the ’60s. Family is the centre of our lives now, but the footy is never far away. All the old Riverina blokes get together every so often, and the spirit of those days lives on.With that, and the Kangaroo reunions we have every year, and getting together with those of us who are left from the 1957 Wallabies, I am constantly reminded how rich my life has been. Norm Provan and I delight in how Rugby League has embraced us because of the photo and the trophy, and how that has extended our involvement in the game. But your sporting years stay with you anyway, bound up in the people you have met along the way.