Author reveals greatest NRL player ever and controversially snubs Wally Lewis
Rugby league’s greatest debate has reignited with claims a forgotten hero deserves higher honours, while some favourites have been snubbed. HAVE YOUR SAY
When wharfie Arthur Halloway chopped his finger off at work he did not want to disappoint his Balmain teammates in a crucial playoff that afternoon. He bandaged his hand up and ran on and led his team to victory.
“Pony” Halloway, halfback for the Glebe Dirty Reds, the Balmain Tigers and Easts, was one of the toughest players ever to pull on a jersey, says rugby league historian Steve Haddan.
Stories of such courage, and perhaps a little bit of madness, are sprinkled throughout Haddan’s magnum opus, The Greatest Game of all: The National Rugby League 1908-2025. He gave me an exclusive preview.
It is Haddan’s sixth book on rugby league and could be one of the most impressive sporting histories published in this country. It is in a league of its own. It took him three years to write it.
Haddan believed Halloway, who died in 1961 aged 76, should be named a rugby league Immortal.
See Haddan’s ultimate team and vote below >>
“He was a tough little halfback, 5’ 5” and 62kg, and was there when the code began,” said Haddan.
Haddan’s encyclopaedic 529-page book shows Halloway played in 10 test matches for Australia. He contested seven premierships as a player, four as a captain-coach.
Haddan, 67, a rugby league obsessive who grew up in Toowoomba, says Halloway remains the most successful coach in NRL history.
And let’s cut to the chase: Who was the best team? South Sydney has won 21 premierships. It would be hard to pass them.
The Broncos, with seven premiership victories, have some catching up to do.
The most wooden spoons? Western Suburbs with 17. Controversially, Haddan omits Wally Lewis and Darren Lockyer from his ultimate NRL side.
Although Lewis remains his favourite player of all time, Wally was left out because he was probably past his prime when the Broncos joined the NRL, Haddan says.
His favourite NRL player was Saints’ supremo Graeme Langlands.
However, he says the greatest NRL player of the 117 seasons he writes about was Norm Provan, the St George giant. Provan won “hands down with his ten successive premierships 1956-1965”.
Haddan’s life of triumph and tragedy is also in a league of its own.
Adopted at birth by Toowoomba GP Frank Haddan and his wife Helen, Stephen Ellison Haddan has been an actor with the Queensland Theatre Company, a photocopier salesman with Rank Xerox, a stand-up comic, a radio and TV host and sportscaster at Channel Nine for nearly two decades.
He said he was lucky to be born at all and always felt a “hand of providence on my shoulder guiding me through life”.
He said his natural father had wanted his 21-year-old mother’s pregnancy terminated. She was terrified but bravely resisted.
Haddan has four children and three grandchildren.
After studying journalism, Australian history and drama at the University of Queensland Haddan played several minor roles in the QTC production of Annie before landing the lead in Upside Down at the Bottom of the World playing D H Lawrence and performing one scene in the nude.
Haddan’s irreverent and waspish impersonations of personalities such as Molly Meldrum, Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Stefan have made him a hometown legend in Brisbane.
His recent impersonation of Donald Trump at the 70th birthday party of broker Steve Wilson brought the house down.
Haddan is a charismatic polymath whose curiosity for rugby league was ignited as a young boy when his nanny, Sally, allowed him to sit with her to watch the footy.
“She loved watching rugby league, boxing and wrestling,” he said. “I adored her.
“I vividly remember watching Australia play Great Britain in 1966. There was all this mayhem on the field and I thought, what have I discovered!”
The following year his father took him to the Toowoomba Athletic oval to see St George play the Clydesdales in a team that included Graeme Langlands, Ian Walsh and Billy Smith.
“Watching those big men run out in those white jerseys with the big red V will stay with me forever,” he said.
He was surprised the big V was red. He had only seen St George before on black and white television and for some reason presumed the V was green.
Haddan’s world was shattered in 1999 when his son Freddie, who had been born with cerebral palsy and suffered from epilepsy, died. He was 12. He believed his second wife Carla saved his sanity. “She patched me back together again.”
Haddan said the arrival of the Broncos in 1988 boosted the game enormously.
His book lists all the teams and the scores.
What was the greatest NRL try?
“For electrifying brilliance, none was better than Ted Goodwin’s chip-and-chase in the 1977 tied grand final. Parramatta hulk Eric Grothe’s bustling run through seven Canterbury defenders in the 1983 preliminary final runs close.”
Greatest grand final?
“In 1989, Canberra defeated Balmain in extra-time to win its first premiership. For sheer emotion, it wins hands down,” he said.
“There have been several that run it to the line: 1997 Newcastle stuns Manly, 2023 Penrith run down the Broncos and 1967, Souths defeat Canterbury in the first limited-tackle grand final.”
Haddan’s ultimate team
1. Clive Churchill
2. Ken Irvine
3. Dave Brown
4. Reg Gasnier
5. Harold Horder
6. Dally Messenger
7. Nathan Cleary
8. Glenn Lazarus
9. Cameron Smith
10. Arthur Beetson
11. Ron Coote
12. Norm Provan (c)
13. Johnny Raper
Bench: Frank Burge, Mal Meninga, Bob Fulton, Allan Langer.
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