Paul Kent: Forgotten chapter of the legend of rugby league Immortal Johnny Raper
Johnny Raper took his setbacks with a laugh and enjoyed more days in his life than most could realise. As we farewelled Chook this week, one of those tales resurfaced, PAUL KENT writes.
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The words were kind when Johnny Raper was farewelled this week, as they should have been.
It might be fair to say nobody left the game with a bigger legacy than Raper, and few were liked like him.
Everybody wanted to be his friend. They pressed to be in his company.
He was as easily identifiable by his surname, Raper, as he was by his nickname, Chook.
He belonged to another era, a less gentle era, and nobody filled it better than him.
He was simply a guy who nobody wanted to be around more.
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Some weeks back a photo was texted through of Raper surrounded by young footballers.
It hangs at Les Motto’s place and carbon dating has identified it to be from sometime around the 1978 period, when the Jets were rugby league’s rough and tumble crew, light on money but big on character, the kind that give the impression they were more interested in events happening off the field than anything happening on it.
It showed Chook with long hair combed down over his ears, wide collar and flared slacks, surrounded by smiling members of the Newtown Jets, their benefactor John Singleton and his wife, the lovely Maggie Eckhardt.
Surrounding him are the likes of John Ribot, Barry Wood and Barry Jensen.
The photo was taken to commemorate the day Raper signed to coach Newtown for the rest of the 1978 season.
Motto was the Newtown trainer. He was giving Chook a cheers and it failed to go unnoticed they were celebrating with a few beers, which was an early forecast for the days ahead.
Raper got the job after the Jets got off to a poor start and coach Paul Broughton was sacked five games in and Raper was available.
The disappointing start to the season failed to resemble the early confidence officials had.
Before the season Singleton invited John Gray and Wood into his Rose Bay mansion to listen to his pitch for why they should join the Jets, Singo convinced he could revive the Jets to something resembling premiership glory.
Singo was already well-entrenched at Newtown. He was married to Eckhardt at the time, this one might have been his second go around, and by then the punters in the King George V stand were calling her “the Paris model”.
They didn’t get many Paris models around Newtown at the time and nobody knew this better than Ms Eckhardt, who made the walk up the stairs of the King George V towards the Jet Set Lounge under, it must be said, some sufferance.
Gray stayed at the Bears but Wood left Singo’s mansion carrying a Gladstone bag with $25,000 cash inside and a referral to see the merchant banker Frank Nugan.
Nugan co-founded the Nugan Hand Bank and was a silent benefactor for the Jets and, the day Wood met him in Macquarie St, he went through a number of tax benefits that Nugan Hand could provide.
Wood, calling himself naive and lazy today, knocked back the advice, a decision Chook would have sympathised with.
So by the time Chook arrived at the Jets they were in the doldrums.
Training was basic.
It was three or four laps for warm-up, a game of touch and then up and down the field three or four times and then over to the Henson Park Hotel for a beer.
Unlike when Gibson coached in 1973, where the rule was everyone had to be gone by 9pm, or whenever it was that Jack left, Chook was a man of the people. He hated to leave while there was still anybody left in the bar.
The same crew that were there when Gibson frequented were still hanging around the bar when Chook took over.
The pub was still full of old SP bookmakers, all of whom were well known to Jack and who soon found their way to Chook.
“He loved a multi,” Wood said of Chook.
Those days the bookies walked around tapping their legs with rolled up newspapers, rarely revealing they had a steel bar secured inside, there was an illegal casino in the back and the local copper was Brian “Chicka” Moore, formerly of the Newtown Jets.
Chook outlived almost all of the old SPs, all except one spotted at his service this week.
The Jets were already struggling by the time Chook arrived and unfortunately it did not get any better.
This was at a time when Gibson was changing the way coaching was done.
He introduced tackle counts, video, and introduced a Saturday morning captain’s run with a barbecue afterwards as a freshen-up before the Sunday game.
It was the pioneer days of the professional era.
That first week Chook called them in to inform them the Jets were going to take that professionalism and step it up a notch, but not by adding Saturday morning to their training week, or anything as barbaric as that, but by training 7pm Saturday nights.
Good grief, they thought.
For reasons that will make you love him forever, that first Saturday night Chook turned up an hour late, and the players quickly got into it, doing four up and downs with the ball; kick off, a set of six, score in the corner and turn around.
As they reached each end Chook would walk over to the goalposts and relieve himself and then order them up the field again.
After the fourth trip up the field Raper called over Wood, the captain.
“Baz, take them up and down twice and then send them home,” he said.
It was the beginning of end of Raper’s coaching career but only a chapter of the legend.
He took his setbacks with a laugh and enjoyed more days in his life than most could realise.
Wood listened, until Chook finally felt a need to explain.
“I’ve got a tip for a good thing at Wenty in 10 minutes,” he said. “We shouldn’t overdo it the night before a game, should we?”
…
AH, rugby league, where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
And the lack of corporate history
Latrell Mitchell (high tackle) was suspended last season for six games but was allowed to use February’s All Star game as one of those suspended games - even though he was ineligible to be picked for it - allowing him to return a round earlier in this year’s competition.
This was once never allowed to be the case in the game, for the reason Fox Sports legend Greg Alexander pointed out: “I don’t think you can count a game where you haven’t been selected, and can’t be selected, because you are not available through suspension.”
It is the only explanation that makes sense. That ever made sense.
Yet it gets worse.
Citing Mitchell, NRL boss Andrew Abdo then used his discretionary powers to also allow Reece Walsh and Brandon Smith (both off-field incidents) to use the All Stars appearance to shave a game off their suspensions, even though both their suspensions were for off-field incidents and the NRL Integrity Unit had initially rejected their appeal for a reduction.
Never happened before.
So then Jordan Rapana (DUI) sought to have his suspension also applied to the All Star game but was told he could not — because it was for an off-field incident.
The problem with discretion is, too often, it can lead to an unconscious bias, as is surely the case here.
The only fair solution is Alexander’s solution, the way it always used to be.
Suspended? Then they cannot be chosen.
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Originally published as Paul Kent: Forgotten chapter of the legend of rugby league Immortal Johnny Raper
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