Paul Kent: The stalled scrum that epitomised the good old days, and Alfie Langer’s love of the punt
HAVE you ever missed the jump on a horse you liked? We can bet Alfie Langer didn’t, with this mid-game effort in 1993 showing the lengths the little legend went to in order to watch a race.
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ALLAN Langer was the giant of the 1990s.
The big three sports were still rugby league, racing and cricket.
It was reflected as much in the Saturday afternoon games at Allianz Stadium, which back then was simply called the Sydney Football Stadium.
Fans could watch the footy on the modern new big screen, a grand innovation, and every so often the screen would switch coverage to the fourth at Randwick, or the next at Flemington, whatever was the race.
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Langer dominated the decade in personality and performance.
There was a time in 1993 that perfectly shows why.
The Broncos were not travelling well at the time.
They were reigning premiers but they were fifth in the days when the playoffs consisted of a top five. Coach Wayne Bennett wasn’t happy.
He believed the players were distracted and Saturday afternoon was a particular distraction.
Nobody needed to tell anybody about how much some of the Broncos enjoyed a punt and Bennett believed Saturdays were particularly tricky.
This was a special kind of torture for Langer. He was the biggest name in Brisbane and everybody knew that he liked a bet and so he could not walk to his letterbox without getting three good tips for that afternoon.
Eventually Bennett banned the players from having a punt on the days they played.
That was not such a bad thing in those days.
The Broncos played mostly on Sundays or Friday nights which had the double attraction of allowing the players, usually led by Langer, to frequent Eagle Farm or Doomben on their Saturday afternoons.
Langer owned shares in a couple of horses with his teammates, one being Trevor Gillmeister.
The Broncos were in Sydney this particular day in 1993, round 11, and at breakfast Langer read the formguide and found the special he was tipped for later on. The horse is lost to memory but it was most likely Botanical, in the fifth at Eagle Farm.
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Botanical was paying 15-1, which was enough to make Langer’s eyes get hungry.
“Gilly,” he said at the team hotel in Bondi, “we can get on here.”
“Leave me alone, Alf,” Gillmeister said.
Gillmeister was an all-or-nothing player. He didn’t want distractions. He certainly wasn’t in the business of going against Bennett’s instructions.
And he did not have the genius of Langer. To be at his best he needed to focus on just one thing, which was generally the sponsors name across the chest of his rivals.
It is impossible to count the amount of times Gillmeister knocked the air out of an opponent when he got that right.
Langer raised the price again. Again, Gillmeister told him to leave him alone.
On the bus to the SFS Bennett was concerned enough at the Broncos’ fifth placing that he did something he did not normally do.
He put a video on the television at the front of the bus and talked the players through their game.
Langer slouched in his seat towards the back listening to 2KY on a small radio pressed against his ear.
“Gilly,” he said, keeping his voice under the noise of the engine. “This thing’s still paying 15-1.”
Gillmeister tried to ignore him.
“Gilly!”
“Leave me alone, Alf.”
Bennett must have twigged. He stood and took a walk down the aisle. Langer slipped the radio out of sight and Bennett went back to seat 1A.
“Gilly!” came the whisper.
“Shut up Alf!”
The Broncos got to the ground and sat in the grandstand watching their lower grades before they began to drift downstairs to get ready.
Bennett patrolled the dressing room in his usual quiet manner. A soft conversation here, a gentle reminder there.
Dressing rooms are quiet places when players get ready. Some get lost in thought, rehearsing what they will do that afternoon. Some battle their nerves. The noise always stays down until just before kick-off when they energy must go up and it comes out all at once in strong talk.
Langer liked to have fun in the dressing room. It relaxed him.
All that was different was his usual accomplice, Kevin Walters, was never any good before a game. Walters got sick, his body alive with adrenalin.
Langer found a corner and bent over to put on his socks when Bennett walked from one room at the Football Stadium into another. The stadium was the best there was at the time and, inside the changerooms, were several smaller rooms.
“We can still get on,” Langer said, turning to Gillmeister.
By then Gillmeister was done.
“Alf, leave me alone.”
Langer put on his socks and tied his boots and eventually Kelvin Giles called the Broncos outside for their warm-up.
The warm up was always on the grass outside where the cricket centre now sits. Langer was never one for getting too physical in the warm-up which consisted of not much more than turning with his back westward and bending at the waist to let his hamstrings get the full heat of the sun.
That and a few kicks of the footy and he was usually ready to go.
“Gilly,” Langer said. “What do you think?”
By this time Gillmeister’s response was a little more animated. He warmed up completely differently to Langer, believing the quality and intensity of his warm-up was the precursor to performance.
The game eventually kicked off and the Roosters were giving as good as they were getting, as they did in those days.
Then a ball went down and referee Steve Clark called a scrum.
Scrums weren’t the smoko back then like they are nowadays. The players got on with it.
Gillmeister put his head into the second-row and took the weight and waited for the ball to be fed.
And he waited.
The Roosters were pushing and the Broncos took the strain and all Gillmeister could see from Langer were his feet still planted. They had not moved an inch toward the tunnel.
“Come on Alf, put the bloody ball in,” he said.
The scrum began breaking up as they still waited for Langer to feed until finally Gillmeister pulled his head out to take another shot at his slow-working halfback.
Alfie was watching the races on the big screen.
“Bloody Gilly!” he said, turning to feed the ball. “I told you that thing’d win!”
The Broncos won the scrum and Langer skipped out from behind and put on a try. Gillmeister thinks it might have been for Steve Renouf.
The Broncos won 26-22 and began the roll to their second premiership in two years.
It was built on the back of the genius of Alf.
FLANAGAN’S REACTION A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF NRL’S ISSUE
SHANE Flanagan’s split personality is the perfect example of the warning the NRL refuses to hear.
After benefitting from several dud decisions that helped his team to victory last weekend, Flanagan said Wednesday: “We need to be good enough to get the win, considering the decisions, and take the referees out of it.”
After copping several dud decisions that contributed to his loss Thursday night, Flanagan said: “It was a couple of decisions in my book (that cost us). There was just too many of them.”
It is not just Flanagan.
Every coach in the NRL seems to praise the referee after a win while they overlook, justify or just plain endorse the dud decisions that went their way.
And you know the coach in the opposition dressing room will say the opposite.
Yet the NRL continues to be guided by the coaches on the way the game should be played.
For reasons unexplained, they seemingly don’t realise coaches might also be speaking to their agenda there when they discuss how the game should be played.
When NRL boss Todd Greenberg made his entry into League Central he seemed to understand this, saying coaches could give their thoughts but would have no more say on rules.
It was long overdue.
But within the NRL we not only have rules, but this evil called “interpretation”, and the coaches have got their fingers all over how the rules are interpreted, and exploited.
The problem is not referees, who are dying through a thousand mixed messages.
It is not the bunker, technology will always be subject to the quality of the people using it.
The problem is the inability of the game’s leaders to fix the problems that occur week after week.
And it is because they do not know how.
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Originally published as Paul Kent: The stalled scrum that epitomised the good old days, and Alfie Langer’s love of the punt
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