The Territory’s greatest sports people: 50 to 41

The Territory has produced some of Australia’s biggest sports stars. Here we countdown the NT’s top 50 sports people of all time.

Kookaburras’ goalie Mark Hickman makes a save during Australian team practice in Athens on the eve of the 2004 Olympic Games.

TERRITORY sport, with all of its passion and excitement built up over more than a century, has produced the very best of the best.

Sportsmen and women who can combine skill with commitment, focus and a deep seated passion and desire to succeed.

This is the best 50 Territory sportspeople in my time and well before I started as a sportswriter with the Northern Territory News almost a quarter of a century ago.

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When editor Matt Williams suggested — with my right arm twisted up my back — that I compile a Top 50 article on all the greats of Territory sport the task seemed relatively simple … until it came time to do it.

Some may disagree, others will agree and those in between will agree to disagree with my selections. But that is the path you take when you are picking the best in any sport, let alone combining them all and coming up with a top 50 of all time.

50. Ian Van Der Wal

Swimming

Ian Van Der Wal in 1998 before the men's 100m butterfly at Australian Swimming National League at the Fortitude Valley Pool in Brisbane. Picture: Mark Cranitch

Van Der Wal swum for Australia at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the Pan Pacific Games a year later where he won a silver medal. He shared the pool with greats like Ian Thorpe, Michael Klim and Grant Hackett and deserves at least a top 50 berth.

49.Ivy Hampton

Darts

Ivy Hampton was one of the great women's dart players Australia has produced.

Hampton was born at McLaren Station, about 80km south of Tennant Creek. I don’t know if Ivy could throw a dart that far, or how accurate she would have been. But she was part of the 1980 Pacific Cup-winning national team, where she won the singles and pairs and she represented Australia in the esteemed Winmau Ladies’ Masters in England.

48. Steven Bowditch

Squash

Steven Bowditch when ranked number three in Australia and number fourteen in the world, circa 1989.

The forgotten man of Territory sport, Bowditch rose to No. 16 in the world in the highly competitive sport of squash when stars like Geoff Hunt were around in the mid 1980s. Bowditch took up squash as an 11-year-old and won the NT Open title aged just 15. A member of Squash Australia’s prestigious Hall of Fame, Bowditch was runner-up to Pakistan great Jahangir Khan in the richest tournament on the professional tour at the time, the 1985 Drakkar North American Squash Open.

47. Frank Stokes

Rugby league

Frank Stokes when playing rugby league for Manly in 1995.

Spotted by then Manly coach Bob Fulton when his Sea Eagles played an end-of-season trip in Darwin, Stokes lit up the NSW Rugby League competition with his evasive skills and tremendous speed. He scored 17 tries for Manly in 51 games, most of them as a winger, though he did play at fullback and five-eighth where he also excelled.

46. Emma Kraft

Athletics

Running legend Emma Kraft during the Queen's baton relay in Alice Springs last year. Picture: Emma Murray

The Centralian distance runner has dominated the sport in the Red Centre, going on to represent Australia in mountain running teams in 2013, 2014 and 2017.

In 2017 Kraft also finished a creditable sixth in the XTerra Trail Run world titles. A City2Surf winner through the streets of Darwin, Kraft is one of Alice Springs’ greatest sporting products.

45. Ralph Wiese

Cricket

Ralph Wiesse in 2017, presenting Waratah all-rounder Brad Schmulian with the medal named after him.

A giant of the game of cricket since arriving in Darwin on a teaching assignment in the early 1960s, Wiesse was the greatest batsman of his time, making big scores for Darwin district club Waratah and Darwin representative side at the former Calder Shield intertown tournaments and against invitational first class sides almost at will. He later became an administrator of the game where his in-depth knowledge has been passed down to a generation of NT cricketers.

44. Bob Holt

Speedway

Katherine's Bob Holt was a fearless speedway driver who won the national speedcar title at age 58.

Holt's death defying crash at the Sydney Showgrounds in 1963.

A photo of Holt’s car flying high into the night sky during a Sydney Showground feature race in 1963 told a lot about the former Katherine fuel distributor’s attitude to sport and life. One of the great characters in motor racing for almost four decades, Holt was clad only in shorts and a sleeveless shirt when he climbed the wall. But he survived the mighty shunt from rival John Harvey, got 500 pounds from the photographer and 36 years later — older, wiser and still crazy — won the national speedcar title at Darwin’s Northline Speedway.

43. Reuben Cooper Sr

Australian rules football

Reuben Cooper Senior.

This man was a sporting colossus of his time and we are talking about the first 40 years of the 20th century. Blessed with exquisite skills and boundless courage, Cooper was the forerunner to indigenous footballers dominating the game in Australia’s Top End and could have represented Australia at swimming, so talented was he.

42. Mark Hickman

Hockey

Mark Hickman pictured in 1999 for the Sydney Olympic Games. Picture: Marco Del Grande.

One of the best goalkeepers in the tough world of hockey that Australia has produced. A product of the powerful Darwin Hockey Association, the man they called “Hicko’’ played an integral part in snapping a gold medal drought for the Australian Kookaburras at the 2004 Athens Olympics, stretching back to this country’s first involvement at the Games in 1956.

41. Luis Casimiro

Soccer

Luis Casimiro was a gifted soccer player.

A long-term presence in Darwin soccer through the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, Casimiro had all the skills, and a huge appetite for goals and the round ball game. He could delight his own fans and upset rival supporters by controlling the ball with both feet with his exquisite skills and never backing down from on-field confrontations.