Players who had God on their bench in footy days

Some people treat their sport like a religion and some sportspeople are intensely religious in the traditional sense.

**This picture has a scanned reverse - see associated content at the bottom of the details window** Father John Cootes, rugby league player.

The game of rugby league is like a religion for some, with the State of Origin series a major feast cycle in the holy calendar. And while Acting Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Robert Forsyth and other religious leaders have told The Daily Telegraph that God is on the side of the Blues in tonight’s ­potentially series’ deciding clash, there have been many outstanding sportspeople who have combined play and prayer.

Some players were intensely religious, some quit professional sport to follow their spiritual vocation, while others have dropped out of the seminary to follow their pigskin or trophy-chasing vocations.

As a youngster, rugby league’s Clive Churchill entertained thoughts of a life as a Marist Brother. Unfortunately for God he failed the leaving certificate and became a tyre moulder instead. And fortunately for footy fans this enabled him to hone the skills that made him one of the greats of the game.

Churchill is given credit for training a young John Cootes, the football-playing Catholic priest. Born in Maitland in 1941, in his youth Cootes was both a star footballer and a star student. He won a scholarship to study theology in Rome where he was ordained in 1962. During his time in Italy he played rugby union with the Lazio rugby team and only missed out on selection for the All-Italy team ­because he was a foreigner.

When he returned to Australia he played in the Newcastle league competition and was selected to play in the city v country game in 1967. He was selected for NSW in 1969 and for Australia in 1969. After taking Australia to victory, scoring one of the tries in the tough 12-7 final against Great Britain in 1970, he announced his retirement from league. He went to Canada to study theology, even toying with playing gridiron, but later left the priesthood to get married and to start a chain of furniture stores.

Father John Cootes (ball) fends off Jim Thompson in Australia v England Test in 1970.

Frank Vaughan had more of an impact as a man of the cloth than wearing football boots. An avid sportsman as a boy and teenager, he left school at 15 and worked in his brother’s jewellery shop, meanwhile working his way up to the first grade in the rugby league.

He played only two games for Eastern Suburbs in 1939, scoring a try and kicking a goal. Easts didn’t make the finals that year and Vaughan went off to seminary school in 1940. He later said “it sort of hit me one day, that’s all I can say, and I decided — this is what I wanted”. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1947, serving in several different parishes before being appointed the founding parish priest of Queen of Peace, Normanhurst, from 1971 until his death in 2014.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott was a keen rugby player and coach at Sydney University Football Club during his time studying to be a priest at St Patrick’s Seminary in 1985-86. He was captain-coach of the fourth-grade premiership-­winning side in 1985 and then non-playing second-grade coach in 1986. If he hadn’t decided on the rough and tumble of politics he may have made a decent union player.

But Mr Abbott had nothing on the achievements of the soccer seminarians who once taught champion Spanish side Real Madrid a lesson. In 1907 a team of ­trainee priests at Valladolid College, an ­institution established in the 16th century by the English to train Catholic clergymen, defeated Real Madrid 6-2.

Hazem El Masri, a devout Muslim who played for the Canterbury Bulldogs from 1996-2009, demonstrated his strong adherence to his faith by keeping strictly to the strictures of Ramadan, even during punishing training schedules.

St George hooker Chris Guider, remembered for playing three grand finals on the same day in 1985, gave up his football career in 1986 to study Scientology. But he later came out and accused the leader of the church of being violent and “toxic”.

Scottish runner Eric Liddell in action at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris..

HEEDING THE CALL

Grant Desme: A professional US baseball player retired from the game at the height of his career in 2010 to become a monk.

Eric Liddell: Made famous by the film Chariots Of Fire, in 1924 Scottish runner Liddell gave away a medal chance by refusing to run a 100m heat, his best event, on a Sunday. Instead he ran in the 400m, winning the gold. He went to China as a missionary and died in an internment camp there in 1945.

Jimmy Carlton: The Australian sprinter made the semi-finals of the 100m and 200m at the Amsterdam Olympics (robbed of gold by illness). He was a certainty to be selected for the 1932 Games but quit sport to go to the seminary. Ordained in 1939, he left the priesthood in 1945 to become a teacher.

Originally published as Players who had God on their bench in footy days