Glory Days column: Trevor Gillmeister sheds light on hard knock life of rugby league
Trevor Gillmeister didn’t suffer too many concussions in his illustrious rugby league career, but it would be fair to say that he caused a few. ‘The Axe’ gives his thoughts on the NRL concussion debate.
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Trevor Gillmeister didn’t suffer too many concussions in his illustrious rugby league career, but it would be fair to say that he caused a few.
With this week’s revelation by Andrew Johns that his epilepsy may have been caused by the head knocks he took on the field, and James Graham’s blunt “it’s my life” comment, the man renowned as one of the hardest tacklers ever to play the game had a typically straightforward response.
“It’s a tough one,” he says. “You see some old players who are doing it tough and others who are fine.
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“I went to a function at Newcastle Wests a while back. They had a heap of old internationals there and quite a few were struggling with dementia. It was pretty sad, but then you can go to an old folks’ home and see people in the same state who never played a game of footy in their lives. You have to ask if those players were going to get like that anyway.
“Some people just have harder heads than others. It’s like they used to say about boxers having a glass jaw. You see some players going into a perfectly normal tackle and they’re knocked out cold.
“I never got knocked out my whole career. I got stunned a few times but I’d come good after about 30 seconds. There was just one time my legs wouldn’t work.
“I guess my head was like concrete.”
While Gillmeister can relate to Graham’s attitude (“I kind of like what I’m doing. The consequences of that are sometimes you get hit on the head”) he acknowledges the need for the NRL to protect players from themselves – as long as everyone plays by the rules.
“There’s no doubt that something has to be done to stop players who are hurt from staying on the field but the clubs are abusing it,” he says.
“A bloke gets a cut on the head and they take him off for an HIA so they can put on a fresh player. It’s a free interchange, and you can’t convince me otherwise.”
Gillmeister is in an ideal position to comment on the evolution of the game’s attitude to head-knocks. He grew up watching Brisbane club games in the 1970s, played in the BRL and NRL in the 80s, was Origin captain in 1995 and in recent years has been assistant coach and trainer with Titans, Maroons and Australian sides.
“The Brisbane comp was a lot more violent than Sydney,” he says. “There were less cameras so blokes would be getting cleaned up off the ball with stiff-arms, the lot.
“When I went down to Sydney I found it was different in two ways: it was faster and cleaner. You didn’t need eyes in the back of your head. Brisbane was ruthless in comparison to Sydney.”
Which is not to say that Gillmeister totally forgot his Brisbane ways when he joined the Roosters in 1986.
While the majority of his trademark tackles that earned him the nickname “The Axe” were hard but fair, he occasionally strayed outside the laws of the game.
Two incidents stand out.
The first was in a 1986 club game against Manly. Sea Eagles’ halfback Des Hasler took a tap and ran. Gillmeister charged out to meet him and left the ground as he felled Hasler with what could only be described as a “copybook coathanger”.
Immediately sent from the field, Gillmeister faced the judiciary the next week, accompanied by Roosters committeeman Bob Seabrook.
“You couldn’t take a lawyer with you in those days,” Gillmeister recalled. “You had to take a club director, so Bob and I have gone in.
“We’re sitting at the table, it’s all quiet and they’ve shown the replay on the big screen and as I hit him all you can hear is Bob going, “Awwww … Jeezus …”
“I’ve turned to him and said, ‘hang on Bobby, you’re supposed to be on my side’.”
Gillmeister copped a six-week ban. As one of the comments below the YouTube clip of the tackle says, “These days he would have got 12 months.”
Which makes one wonder what he would get for his hit on Blues’ forward Stephen Folkes in Origin II, 1987.
“It was at the SCG and it was all muddy,” he said. “Mick O’Connor made a break and he was bouncing around and I was coming back on side. I was right behind Folkes and Snoz (O’Connor) was heading towards us and I thought, ‘He’s going to give it to Folkes. This is going to be Christmas’. Snoz passed it and I’ve cleaned Folkes up from behind something shocking. He never saw me coming.”
As Folkes was carried off TV commentator Jack Gibson growled, “Folkes’ll be wishing he was four of five yards faster. Gillmeister mugged him. It was a back-alley job, that one.”
Gillmeister says there was a footnote.
“About 10 or 12 years ago me and Snoz were doing a speaking gig at a function. The compere asked me if I had any regrets from my career. I thought about it and said, ‘no, I don’t think so.’
“He’s asked Snoz the same thing and he’s said, ‘Yes. Just one. I wished I’d never passed that ball to Stephen Folkes in 1987 because Gilly smashed him’.”
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