Where are they now? Parramatta’s 1986 premiership team
As the hype continues to build for Parramatta’s premiership charge, we track down the 17 men who last won the blue and golds a title.
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Geoff Bugden farms pecan nuts in Lismore, with little interest in being remembered.
Yet he is.
Sure, the old prop doesn’t watch much footy now.
But that doesn’t matter, either.
Or not for Eels fans.
Which is also how it goes for Ausgrid employee Mark Laurie. Same deal Sydney forklift driver Mick Delroy.
That once wiry Eels winger who, following a divorce soon after retiring, shifted all focus onto the two sons who, alone, he’s raised from toddlers into young men.
“So overnight,” Delroy explains, “rugby league meant nothing to me”.
Still, the image of this 73kg flyer lives on.
Right there alongside Sterlo, Pricey, Bert, the Crow and anyone else tattooed to that Winfield Cup memory which cannot be killed — the 1986 Parramatta Eels.
Sure, most of you know the team which beat Canterbury 4-2 in rugby league’s only tryless grand final.
Remember, too, how said SCG slobberknocker not only farewelled Parramatta Gods Ray Price and Mick Cronin – together, lapping the oval with Tooheys cans in hand – but remains famed for the likes of Peter Sterling, Brett Kenny, even Eric ‘Guru’ Grothe.
But Eels fans?
Well, they’re just as fond of Terry Leabeater and Peter Wynn.
Same as they’ll tell you how, on fulltime, with siren sounding and Canterbury making one last tryline plunge, it was little hooker Michael Moseley whose desperate legs tackle saved the day.
“But Jesus Christ, I didn’t think you’d track me down?” Moseley, now an accounts manager with Laminex, laughed this week. “There mustn’t be much on if you want to chat with me.”
But actually, there is.
Again.
For this how it goes, right?
Every time another Parramatta team causes talk of – gasp – premierships, we go back to that last mob to win one.
Right now, it’s the 2020 Eels firing.
Not only undefeated through five rounds — coincidentally, the club’s best start since 1986 — but facing those reigning premier Roosters in what is already being hyped as a potential grand final preview.
Which isn’t to say we haven’t been here before.
We have.
Like in 2001, when the Eels wore black skivvies to the Grand Final Breakfast. Or again 2009, when beaten by a Melbourne side paid in motorboats.
“And if any of those sides had won it all, we’d be gone,” Wynn shrugs. “ Forgotten.”
But they didn’t.
So they haven’t.
No, instead the ‘86 Eels endure.
With Parramatta fans clinging to them like Charlie Brown’s mate Linus does that blue safety blanket.
So who cares if for the men themselves, that day remains a brief moment in lives filled by so much more?
Take centre Steve Ella.
While forever frozen by fans as the Zip Zip Man, Ella has since earned a Philosophy Masters from Sydney University, spent 20 years saving lives as a drug counsellor and now heads up Aboriginal Health at Gosford Hospital.
Not bad for a bloke first employed at the same joint as a landscaper.
“So you move on,” he says, simply.
Same with Sterling, now a Channel 9 mainstay. Or Wynn, with his Parramatta sports mecca.
While only last month, Pricey revealed how again he is preparing to beat shit out of cancer.
Elsewhere, Tony Chalmers is with Fox Sports, John Muggleton the Penrith Emus, and Crow whoever rolls in for a schooner at his Gerringong hotel.
Hell, we even tracked down larrikin fullback Paul Taylor, now beachside in Surfers Paradise after living for 18 months in the shadows of Uluru.
Asked the last time he watched the ‘86 decider, Taylor replies: “Monday”.
As in this week?
“No, Monday after the game,” he laughs. “I can’t even remember playing football anymore.”
Still, for some 30 minutes we chat anyway.
Along the way discovering how as a team, these ‘86 Eels have never stopped being one.
Today, every player not only connected via a WhatsApp group, but also those October gatherings which, organised by Wynn, run over three days annually on the Gold Coast.`
To a man, they also say the years have better helped them understand the significance of that September Sunday so long ago.
“Who it mattered to then,” says Grothe. “And still matters to now”.
Which is why they also want change.
“Because being the last Eels premiership team, it’s nice,” says Ella. “But also, it isn’t.
“This record is not something we want.
“We want Eels fans embracing a new premiership. New players.
“Not something we did 34 years ago.”
1986 EELS: WHERE ARE THEY NOW
1. Paul Taylor: Lives at Surfers Paradise, where he operates high rises and resorts.
2. Mick Delroy: Forklift operator at an Eastern Creek warehouse.
3. Mick Cronin: Gerringong royalty and hotel publican.
4. Steve Ella: Manages the Aboriginal Health Service at Gosford Hospital.
5. Eric Grothe Sr: Owns and operates Marquee Hire Sydney with his son, Eric Jr.
6. Brett Kenny: Apart from beating cancer in 2017, also works on staff at Shelly Beach Golf Club.
7. Peter Sterling: Channel 9 NRL commentator/analyst.
8. Geoff Bugden: Spent 12 years as a NSW Police detective, but now a pecan nut farmer near Lismore.
9. Michael Moseley: Lives in Kellyville and works as an account manager for Laminex.
10. Terry Leabeater: Lives at Terrigal where he has been involved in the building game.
11. Mark Laurie: Works for Ausgrid.
12. John Muggleton: Famed rugby defensive tutor is coaching Penrith Emus in the 2020 Shute Shield.
13. Ray Price (c): Retired Gold Coast bus driver. No stranger to a fight, revealed to the Sunday Telegraph last month that both he and wife Sandy are battling cancer.
Interchange
14. Peter Wynn: Owns the world’s greatest sports store — Peter Wynn’s Score — in Parramatta.
15. Tony Chalmers: After years at Channel 9, now in game day operations with Fox Sports.
Coach John Monie: Aged 75, lives on the Sunshine Coast.