The iconic photo of the moment the Brisbane Broncos were born
THE message was clear from Brisbane’s very first match in the big time — “We are here. We are not going away and we are not bowing down to anyone.’’
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“WE ARE here. We are not going away and we are not bowing down to anyone.’’
That’s the emotion Greg Dowling sees in his face whenever he comes across one of the most famous of all Broncos images, a snapshot in time of the club’s first try in their first premiership match.
That moment in Queensland rugby league’s history has its 30-year anniversary on March 6th.
Dowling was pictured by The Courier-Mail in the next morning’s earthquake-size coverage of Brisbane’s 44-10 thrashing of Manly in the club’s maiden NSWRL match at Lang Park.
The Queensland and Australian prop, one of six internationals and three future Test players in the Broncos side that day, is raising his fist joyfully to the horizon. Beneath him is the Manly skipper Paul Vautin, who had been powerless to stop Brett Le Man scoring the first Broncos try.
“It’s got some fond memories for me, every time I see it,’’ Dowling said this week when delayed by floodwaters in driving home to Cairns from Townsville.
“It was elation. A lot of people had written us off leading up the game especially in the Sydney press. Manly were the premiers and we playing them in our first game. Our forwards were supposed to be soft.
“We went on to win our first seven games and then some of them were saying in Sydney that we’d been allowed to get too strong.’’
For a team built on Queensland internationals, the first try was scored by Brett Le Man, a 25-year-old recruit from Brothers.
It was from a bomb launched by replacement halfback Craig Grauf, a 20-year-old from Norths. Allan Langer was off the field from the effects of a head knock at the time.
Le Man went on to play 38 first grade games for Brisbane between 1988-91. Grauf played four more NSWRL games for the Broncos, all in 1988, but turned out for six more games in 1996 for Gold Coast.
Dowling said he understood the ex-second-rower lives in Brisbane, but rarely goes to Broncos Old Boys reunions.
“He’s always kept a low profile and didn’t like the limelight,’’ Dowling said.
“As a player, I always reckoned his workrate helped us.’’
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Dowling chuckled as he nominated the first memory to rush to mind from the win over Manly.
“Well, Don McKinnon,’’ he said.
McKinnon, Manly’s Kangaroo tour prop, was later fined $1000 for urinating on the Lang Park field in 1988, an act the media was quickly onto even without the aid of social media.
“I saw him do it,’’ Dowling said.
“I have to be honest. It fired me up. I said to some of the forwards, like (Bryan) Horse Niebling and Turtle (Greg Conescu), `That’s what he thinks of us. That’s he thinks of our ground. How disrespectful’.’’
Asked about it by News Corp Australia, Sea Eagle Noel Cleal said: “I was only standing a few metres away from him. He said: ‘When a man’s got to go, a man’s got to go’.”
The Broncos led Manly 14-6 at halftime. Wally Lewis ignited the second half, scoring two tries and giving the last pass for two more in a display ARL chairman Ken Arthurson said afterwards was one of the finest of the Australian captain’s career.
Terry Matterson, one of only three Sydney imports that day, scored 24 points on his 21st birthday, a club record that stood for 14 years.
The crowd of 17,451, a little over half-capacity, underlined the Brisbane league community’s resistance about supporting the Broncos, which would be entrenched due to unhappiness that their Brisbane clubs had been thrust into a second-tier competition.
But the Broncos, for all their capacity to polarise opinion right from day one, did, after all, have “Alf’’.
Langer’s retreat to the head-bin early in his debut NSWRL match fed the narrative that he was too small at 165cm to withstand the collisions of week-to-week “Sydney football’’ despite the evidence to the contrary in his debut State of Origin series the previous year.
“When I went back on, I tried to pack in at lock, which was funny because I hadn’t played in the forwards since the under-sevens, so I could understand why people were concerned about me,’’ Langer said.
By halfway through the 1988 season, Langer was playing so well, mesmerising with how he felled much bigger opponents, that he was picked for Australia and managed to draw 2000 to a shopping centre appearance in Toowoomba. “Alf’s a craze, like yo yos,’’ the late Peter Jackson summed up.
“We missed the finals in that first year by a win when we lost the last game of the season. “The Origin series killed us — everyone said it was a disaster,’’ Dowling said.
“A lot of people in North Queensland ask me who I support now and I say, `I didn’t play for the Cowboys’. I’m still a big Broncos fan. I have the utmost respect for the jumper and what they were trying to achieve.
“When we had a 25-year reunion (in 2013) we watched the first half and then went inside and had a beer with. I said to some of them, `We created something special. Don’t ever forget that and we need to stay close’.’’
Broncos v Sea Eagles
Lang Park, March 6, 1988
Broncos: Colin Scott; Joe Kilroy, Chris Johns, Gene Miles, Michael Hancock; Wally Lewis ©, Allan Langer; Greg Dowling, Greg Conescu, Bryan Niebling, Keith Gee, Brett Le Man, Terry Matterson. Used reserves: Mark Hohn, Billy Noke, Craig Grauf. Coach: Wayne Bennett.
Sea Eagles: Dale Shearer; David Ronson, Matt Burke, Michael O’Connor, Stuart Davis; Cliff Lyons, Des Hasler; Phil Daley, Paul Vautin ©, Don McKinnon, Noel Cleal, Ian Gateley, Owen Cunningham. Used reserve: Paul Shaw. Coach: Bob Fulton.
Scorers: Broncos 44 (Lewis 2, Matterson 2, Kilroy, Le Man, Noke tries; Matterson 8 goals) d Sea Eagles 10 (Lyons, Shearer tries; O’Connor goal). Halftime: Broncos 14-6. Crowd: 17,451.
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