BRL Flashback: Tony Currie recalls tough days of the BRL on and off the field

BRL flashback series. FOG Tony Currie recalls the tough days – and the tough men – of the BRL, including tough love from Greg Oliphant who threatened to knock Currie out if he quit a road run.

NSW halfback Tommy Raudonikis, left, and his Queenslander counterpart Greg Oliphant share a beer after the first State of Origin in 1980. Note Oliphant’s scared area around his left eye after a brawl with Raudonikis in a 1977 interstate game.

Today we continue the BRL flashback series, with FOG Tony Currie recalling the tough days on and off the field – including tough love from Greg Oliphant who threatened to knock Currie out if he quit a road run.

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The rough and tumble BRL of the 1970s and ‘80s was not a place for the faint hearted – even on a simple road run.

When the FOG Tony Currie was doing extra training with former Australian halfback Greg Oliphant, Oliphant would mix boxing in his backyard gym with road runs.

One day Oliphant invited Currie on a run but asked Currie to make sure he took a 20 cent piece with him for a phone booth call.

Why?

“Because if you quit, I am going to knock you out and you’ll need to ring an ambulance to bring you home,’’ Oliphant told Currie.

NSW halfback Tommy Raudonikis and his Qld counterpart Greg Oliphant.

Currie said while Oliphant was one of the best blokes you’d meet, he had a great training ethic.

“We’d go around to his place at Aspley and box,’’ Currie recalled.

“He had a damaged eye from a fight with Tom Raudonikis years earlier and we’d go at that blindside and chip him off,’’ Currie laughed.

The BRL in the 1970s and 80s were tough days on and off the field.

Everyone had full-time jobs, you trained Tuesday and Thursday nights, played at the weekend and rose for work again on Monday after being bashed from pillar to post.

No ice baths, no gentle pool recovery sessions, no days off. Trying telling the NRL players of today how good they have got it.

Oliphant, a Wests Panthers premiership winner, ex-Balmain captain and State of Origin original, was tough. Tony Currie was tough. Everyone was tough.

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One famous story is Brothers second rower Danny Mander running onto the field with blood trickling from beneath a head bandage. Why? Because his coach Raudonikis had clipped him for not paying attention during the rev-up.

John Dowling playing for Queensland in 1982.

But one of the toughest blokes was former Easts and Wynnum-Manly hooker John Dowling.

Dowling, in the twilight of his career, was named in the Queensland State of Origin side in 1982 while playing with St George in Sydney.

As was the way in those days, he got into a fight during the Origin match – which just happened to be Currie’s first ever Origin jersey – and while resting for 10 minutes in the sin bin he had a head wound above his eye stitched by the team doctor.

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“We won and afterwards we had a function and I was with John Dowling and his eye was dripping blood,’’ Currie recalled.

“So he gets the doctor who puts the light on it.

“And the doctor realises he didn’t stitch the cut, he stitched above it – all with no needles.

Doc offered to patch him up again and asked Dowling did he want a needle.

“No,’’ came Dowling’s reply, so Doc took the old stitches out and put the new ones in – all without Dowling being needled up.

“He is one of the toughest men I have met,’’ Currie said.

The Norths premiership winning team of 1980 did not mind a blue. (Pic Jim Fenwick)

Currie said as well as being tough days, the BRL was also tribal.

“I remember I switched to Redcliffe in 1985, but every weekend I would still be at Wests watching the Panthers play,’’ Currie said.

“Even at the end of the season, I was drove them (Wests) around on the bus for their pub crawl even though I played with Redcliffe.

“And in those days every BRL side played their own style.

Redcliffe's Test rugby league second rower Wally Fullerton Smith learnt his trade in the lower grades before entering A grade.

“Valleys, they had a big forward pack and they’d try and stand over you and wear you down.

“Then you’d play Easts who’d throw it around.

“And certain teams could not handle the style of other teams.

“That is one thing I miss today, the difference in style and coaching.

“A coach can’t coach the same way if you don’t have the same cattle.’’

The take no prisoners approach was not unique to the BRL in the 1980s.

Wynnum-Manly prop Greg Dowling, playing for Australia, fighting off the field with New Zealand’s Kevin Tamati. “He (Dowling) loved the rough stuff. If a stoush was on he’d be the first one in,’’ said Dowling’s former Queensland team mate Mark Murray Pic Renilson

Just ask supporters of Norths and Valleys who watched their players dish-up 80 seconds of mayhem in a vicious grand final brawl in 1990.

And when Brisbane teams played up country under the refereeing of Barry Gomersall, the veterans would tell the rookie forwards that if a blue started, be ready to go the distance because Gomersall was renowned for not stopping play for a brawl.

Then there was the 1993 preliminary final between Wests and Easts, who were coached by John Lang and had Paul Green as their halfback.

It was Currie’s farewell season after he was coaxed out of retirement by Panthers’ coach Gary Gary Greinke following an injury to Wests centre Sam Smith.

Pat Kelly playing for Wests, with Greg Oliphant is in pursuit.

Easts beat Wests fair and square in the preliminary final, but in the closing minutes Currie started an all-in-brawl after Easts prop Peter Anderson had bundled him over the sideline.

“He smacked me in the mouth and it was on,’’ said Anderson, who excellent ball-playing forward who rose to play for Brisbane under the coaching of Tom Raudonikis.

Currie said Wests were not going to win the game, but he thought if Wests played Easts again in two weeks time in the grand final, then the Panthers would have a psychological advantage if they won the fight. And they did win the dust-up.

“I believe that was a big part in us beating them in the grand final,’’ Currie said.

Darryl Brohman breaks out of a tackle by Easts Rod Morris at Lang Park in 1977.

“When we left the ground that day (preliminary final) and they had five blokes getting stitched up. That (fight) would have been a painful memory for them,’’ Currie added.

Currie’s Queensland and Australian teammates, Gary Belcher and Wally Fullerton-Smith, agreed it was the making of them doing the hard yards as boys playing against men in the lower grades before entering A grade.

“You played third grade, reserve grade, first grade. You played against grown men and it was a good lesson,’’ Fullerton-Smith said.

“It was pretty tough and tumble in those days.’’