Blast from the past - Eastern Suburbs 1975

Dennis Hourn | March 15, 2023

In 1975 one of the greatest ever rugby league teams took the field on Saturday 20th of September in the Grand Final Eastern Suburbs v St George. Easts won that game 38 nil in a record-breaking performance humiliating St George and cementing the Rooster's place in history.

I was looking at the picture of this team the other day and it got me thinking about this game and what happened the following week to another Eastern Suburbs sporting team, Easts Cricket Club or Waverley as it was then known.

September 1975 was a momentous time for the Eastern Suburbs Cricket Club as it had secured the services of the England cricket captain Tony Greig for 1975/76 season. Easts had gone 30 years without a first grade premiership and hopes were really high that Tony could reinvigorate the club. The club had invested a lot of time and energy and of course money so the pressure was really on for us to perform.

The first game of the season was to be played against St George at Waverley Oval on Saturday the 27th of September. There was a huge build up to the game and quite a crowd in attendance on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

One of the Eastern Suburbs players was none other than John Rheinberger who the previous week had been plucked out of obscurity by coach Jack Gibson to play in the centres in the rugby league grand final.

Was St George to be humiliated two weeks in a row? 

Well the script didn't go quiet to plan. 

The previous day it had rained heavily and in this era of uncovered wickets we turned up to the ground to be confronted with a traditional Australian "sticky". Tony Greig had initially thought there was no way we could play given the state of the wicket. After the pitch inspection he came into the dressing room and said he'd never seen a wicket like it. "It was like glue" he said. So you can imagine his surprise when the umpires ruled the ground fit for play.

Tony lost the toss and of course Ray Tozer, the St George captain, sent the Eastern Suburbs side in. What happened next was indeed a debacle but not what the Eastern Suburbs cricket officials had hoped for. This time the shoe was on the other foot and the Eastern Suburbs side were dismissed by St. George for a paltry 33. A disastrous start to the season and the press was all over it the next day.

In the crowd was none other than a very interested Jack Gibson. 

What is not generally known about Jack is that he was a very handy cricketer and played four seasons with the Eastern Suburbs Cricket Club. He was an opening bowler with the ability to get prodigious swing and elicit movement off the wicket. In his time with the Easts he took just on 100 wickets in first and second grade.

Anyway after being dismissed for 33 we were all sitting rather disconsolately in the dressing room when big Jack lumbers in and in typical laconic style doesn't say much to the team but did manage to blurt out:

" We scored 5 more than you last week"

With that cutting comment Jack exited the dressing room leaving us all even more crestfallen. We went on to lose this game outright.

Maybe Jack's comment worked for us because the good news was that after losing our first two games Easts went on to win the premiership that year due in no small part to the outstanding performance of one Tony Greig who took 75 wickets and scored more than 500 runs that season.

Two Easts premiership teams within six months. Doesn't get much better.