Governor-General David Hurley reveals his lifetime passion for the South Sydney Rabbitohs
The Rabbitohs have famous fans all over the world but none match the honour and esteem of Australia’s Governor-General David Hurley, whose passion for the Bunnies is immense.
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He is the rabid Rabbit from a working class upbringing now known as Your Excellency.
This is the fascinating story of Australia’s governor-general – his Excellency General the Honourable David Hurley — and his love for South Sydney.
The Rabbitohs have famous fans worldwide but none match the honour and esteem of General Hurley, Australia’s representative of the monarch and commander-in-chief of the Australian Defence Force. This man has the power to dismiss a Prime Minister.
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Yet behind each ceremonial conversation and every constitutional duty is a 68-year-old from Port Kembla who idolises South Sydney’s proud history.
Hurley’s personal crest even includes a red rabbit with green tail.
He is surrounded by South Sydney memorabilia and souvenirs while working at Government House and when at home in Canberra.
Hurley, a former senior officer with the Australian Army and NSW Governor between 2014 and 2019, tells of his remarkable passion and devotion to the mighty Rabbitohs.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS LAST
It all started in 1961 when a young Hurley drove to Redfern Oval with his father, James.
“If I go back to first impressions … when I was about eight, my father took me to Redfern to watch a game. After the match, we had a relative – he was either president or vice-president — and they gave me a South Sydney football jumper, the old original red and green striped one, and a training ball, a leather one with the white band painted around it for night-time training.
“The jumper came down around my feet, it was like a gown. I’m told I clutched and wore that thing all the way home to Wollongong. I probably went to bed in it. I wore that jumper until my mum (Norma) said it was falling apart. It was a spare jumper from their kit bag. It was brand new.
“I clutched that football like it was gold. The football just wore out. I couldn’t repair it anymore. That moment, I think, said to me: ‘I’m a South Sydney supporter’.”
MY BURROW
Hurley is surrounded by red and green in his Canberra office and residence in Yarralumla.
“Sitting on my desk is a South Sydney gnome,” he said. “I have the little South Sydney 2014 football in the corner. I’ve got a South Sydney cap in my office. I have umpteen South Sydney jumpers signed by players. My annual caps are in a pile in the bedroom over in our apartment.
“I’ve got paintings given to me from Tribal Warrior in Redfern, the indigenous group, with a lovely big rabbit. That will get displayed in my house when we move out of here. I’ve got towels, scarfs, the original scarf I was given when I was about 10 years old, signed now by Russell Crowe.
“I’ve got beanies and so forth. Every year they should stop giving me keyrings – I don’t own that many keys. And my little rabbit pins, lapel pins. And nearly every T-shirt I wear when I exercise is a South Sydney shirt or gear.”
Hurley also has a red and green tea cosy.
THE PASSION
Hurley says he grew up in “red and green nappies”.
“I was born in 1953 so up until the late 1960s, St George dominated rugby league in your life. There were those close grand finals with the Rabbits.
“Souths were getting better and better and by then I’m a teenager and was very impressionable. The team was starting to do well and you get more and more involved with it.
“Early days it was a family thing and then I was lucky to have a period where Souths won a number of premierships (four between 1967 and 1971). You ride along on that and then you’re hooked, although the next 30, 40 years there was a drought. But you still stay engaged.
“You ride the wave with them every year – you have your good years and not-so-good but it’s been lifelong. All my family are Rabbits supporters. They understand and are all passionate.”
Hurley’s first SCG match helped cement his love.
“I can remember that sensation of walking into the SCG and thinking ‘well, this is where it all happens, cricket and all the other sports’.
“I was born in 1953 so that would have been the early ‘60s. I grew up in Port Kembla down Wollongong way and I played rugby league from seven years old onwards for Port Kembla until I joined the Army.
“The Wollongong team were our biggest rivals and they were affiliated with St George. So Port Kembla was never going to be affiliated with St George so I grew up in a club which was closely affiliated with the Rabbits.”
Hurley was a junior league rep player in Illawarra – before being forced to play union.
“In my first couple of months at Duntroon, I got a bit anxious thinking they were going to start to train and trial soon so I asked one of the sergeants how I could get time off to go to Queanbeyan to trial.
“He looked at me as though I had three heads. He said ‘mate, you’re in the Army now, we don’t play that game. You’re going to learn how to play rugby’. So I changed codes. I loved playing rugby and playing both codes.”
COOKED CHOOK
The Souths-Roosters rivalry never dies.
Asked if he disliked the Roosters, Hurley laughed: “Only when they win. They are a great club, they produce fantastic football teams and you have to respect them for that.
“But we just want to beat them. It’s in our genes, you’ve got to beat the Roosters. That’s it. Both clubs bring a strong sense of history to the game and passionate supporters. They’re also next door neighbours. It’s the embodiment of the history of rugby league in Australia. That’s why it’s important.”
Hurley asked the author of this story who he supported. When told it was the Roosters as a kid, a cheeky Governor-General said: “If I’d known that I wouldn’t have done the interview.”
FRUSTRATION AND FIRE
Despite his lofty position, Hurley admits to being vocal at games.
“I do get worked up at the games and get disappointed,” he said. “I get cranky when they lose when they shouldn’t have; those games when they should be all over a team and they lose by three points or something like that.
“How on earth did you let that happen?
“After the grand final this year, because I wasn’t able to go, my wife Linda was very surprised how calmly I took the loss. I was extremely disappointed for them that they didn’t get up after such an extraordinary effort.
“But you have to credit the Panthers. They played a very good, tactical game with tough defence. We just couldn’t get into the right places to attack properly. And for all that, they only lost by two points. You had to be proud of them.”
BYE BYE BUNNIES
Hurley was irate when Souths were kicked out of the competition after the 1999 season.
“For the two years they were out of the competition I didn’t watch a rugby league game,” he said. “I gave up in disgust. I was very upset. Here was a foundation club which always had enormous support, not just in Sydney, but in the rugby league world.
“I wasn’t in the seat of the people making the decisions – and I’m not trying to double guess them – but you would ask: ‘What was the history? What are the values? And if we want to continue to grow, and we’re changing the platform, what are strengths we have to build on?”
The Rabbitohs returned in 2002.
“It was so important. I was in Canberra about to go to Sydney on a posting. I was elated and really happy that things were back to where they should be. Things have righted themselves,” he said.
“Although I didn’t get to Sydney to walk in the demonstrations or anything like that, I was really grateful for that huge effort and the public outpouring that got the energy going to enable decisions to be made.
“Rugby league would be a lot poorer without South Sydney. There is passion from supporters of every club but South Sydney roots are really deep and their rivals are enormous. Many of the big games in the competition are built around rivalry with Souths. We would have lost all that.”
GREATEST MEMORY
Hurley fondly recalls when coach Piggins and star players Mario Fenech, Phil Blake and Craig ‘Tugger’ Coleman took Souths to the 1989 minor premiership.
“In 1989, when Souths were virtually undefeated the whole year and then lost the two finals in a row and were out,” Hurley said.
“I was overseas on a posting in Malaysia and not being able to see any of the games, it was really annoying. They were having one of the greatest seasons in donkey’s years and I wasn’t in the country to see anything and share it.
“Of course being there when we won in 2014 was brilliant. I stayed with my wife and waited there (at Accor Stadium) until the last Rabbit had left the ground. I was the Governor of NSW at the time. One of the attendants said to my wife: ‘He’s a real fan’. There was a compliment.
“It was a long time coming. If you’re passionate about them then that brings together so many memories.”
LEADING THE WAY
Hurley is a fan of the current owners – and Piggins, the previous club chairman.
“All credit to them (Crowe, James Packer and Mike Cannon-Brookes), the team and club is doing well in the business sense and the performance sense,” he said.
“We didn’t get the final win we wanted but to be in the last four for three or four years in a row, and making the grand final this year, that says we’re performing at a high level. There is a good structure underneath it and good investment for the future. In the business sense, it is doing well.
“George was also important for the passion, he galvanised and supported the club through the courts and back again. You’ve got to deeply respect that because he wouldn’t let the club die. You bring all the passion that fans have, and try to embody that in a person, and that’s George. He would bleed red and green.”
FAVOURITE PLAYER
There were many candidates – but just one winner.
“Ron Coote was always my idol as a kid,” Hurley said. “He would be my favourite player. And he’s a lovely man, a great fellow. Of all the Souths players, and there’s a myriad of them, he, as a kid, was my favourite and I hold onto that.
“Coote, Bob McCarthy, John Sattler, the greats of rugby league and they’re playing in your team jumper, and George, of course. Eric Simms, Denis Pittard, Ray Branighan on the wing scoring tries. These are players I have now met. They influence you. Even if you’re playing a different code, you’re still watching what they do.”
TOUGH FINDING TIME
Attending matches can be difficult for a man tasked with so much responsibility – but he can find some time to taunt the Raiders.
“I don’t get too many games unfortunately because we’re either travelling or have other events on weekends,” he said. “Maybe two, three or four games during the year.
“I try to get to the first game of the year if I can and if they’re playing in Canberra and I happen to be in Canberra. Much to the Raiders’ board’s disgust, I go along in my South Sydney kit. They know where I stand.”
Latrell’s anonymous off-season escape
- Nick Walshaw
Latrell Mitchell is quietly making preparations for his 2022 NRL season with a unique training program of chainsaws, quad bikes and that most punishing of farm chores — fencing.
Despite his standing among the most recognised faces in Australian sport, 24-year-old Mitchell is currently sweating away in blissful anonymity on the NSW North Coast, working his 600 acre cattle property near Taree.
It has now been four months since South Sydney’s superstar fullback made headlines for a nasty, and heavily dissected, high shot on Roosters rival Joey Manu — a tackle which saw him rubbed right out of the Bunnies grand final push.
In a further twist, chief executive Andrew Abdo also confirmed, when announcing the 2022 draw recently, that Mitchell’s hyped return will coincide with the Bunnies Round 3 clash with the Chooks.
Which you just know will be the only story anyone talks about for a week, and maybe more, prior. But as for Mitchell seeming worried?
Um, no.
Instead, the NSW Origin star has been immersed within a farm life that includes running cattle, riding quad bikes, fencing, felling trees, shifting hay and generally enjoying time with his young family.
Then late in the afternoons, he whacks golf balls over — and into — one of the dams on his sprawling acreage.
Asked about the unique, and blissfully anonymous preparation, Rabbitohs chief executive Blake Solly said Mitchell’s expanding property portfolio — which includes spending $1.8 million on a home for his parents, Matt and Trish — was testament to a young man making smart financial choices.
“Latrell talks about his land with a lot of affection and he should be tremendously proud of what he’s doing there,” Solly said.
“Buying a property for himself, then one for mum and dad … for anyone aged 24 you couldn’t help but be proud of them.
“Especially too when you know how important that connection to land is for Latrell.
“I think it says a lot about him.
“The money he’s earning from a great football career, he’s now putting that back into not only his family, but a lifestyle and career for himself after he finishes.”
Elsewhere, Solly also praised the work Mitchell has been doing with charities, indigenous causes and as a growing voice against racism.
“In many ways, it’s remarkable for a young man to be doing everything he is and, as a club, we’re really proud,” Solly said.
“And he still has enormous potential, both on and off the field too.
“Latrell Mitchell is still a young man.
“And he will continue to develop, progress and lead. He’s still got so much to give both on the field and off it.”
Solly also praised Mitchell’s growing profile as a voice for Australian indigenous issues.
“He and Cody Walker, with their status in the indigenous community, their willingness to stand up for what they believe in, it’s really important,” he said.
“And as a club, we fully supported them.
“Those two young men are considered, articulate and their positions on many important issues comes from a great place.
“When you look at their age, what they’re doing and saying, they really are wonderful human beings.”
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