The Magic Ticket: A free pass to the best moments in Sydney sporting history

A world title boxing bout at Rushcutters Bay which resulted in the first African-American champion, a classic rugby league grand final or an uncle who was involved in family folklore?

We gave staff a Magic Ticket which enabled them to attend any sporting event in the history of Sydney. Here are their selections.

The event: Rower Ned Trickett arriving back in Sydney from England

Where: Circular Quay
When: October, 1876

His name was Ned Trickett, and he was born and bred in Greenwich – son of a convict – learning to row on Sydney Harbour. After besting everyone in the colony as a sculling champion, his patron James Punch – of Punch’s Hotel on the corner of King and Pitt streets – took him to England to take on the “King of the Thames”, Joseph Henry Sadler, England’s unrivalled champion.

In front of 60,000 people, lined up on both sides of the river, our bloke beat that peasant of the Thames by four lengths in the World Sculling Championship from Putney to Mortlake over four-and-a-quarter miles, in the old money. Sydney lost its nut.

This very paper went big with the story on July 19, 1876.

“This is the first time the champion of England has been beaten by a competitor who has not been a native of the British Isles, and the fact this victory has been won by a native of this colony cannot fail to be regarded with pride by every citizen of NSW.

“That a population of 600,000 people should have a champion capable of beating the best man out of 32 million, may be some ground for congratulation.”

Ned Trickett in action. Credit: Fairfax Archives

Being the son of a convict made it even more special. You Pommies sent us here as human refuse. Well, now look at us. Just one generation and we are stronger than your bloody best and brightest!

When Trickett’s ship came into Circular Quay four months later, he was greeted by a crowd of 25,000, and then carried on their shoulders to a horse-drawn carriage which they intended would bear him up to Punch’s Hotel. In the end though, horses weren’t good enough for our Ned. It was Sydneysiders themselves who would haul the carriage up the Pitt Street slope, through thick crowds cheering him to the echo.

The crowds drank and sang and toasted Ned late into the night; he was soon presented with £900 gathered from a grateful populace to thank him for the honour he had bestowed on the colony. He was our first sporting superstar.
Peter FitzSimons

The event: World heavyweight title fight

Where: Rushcutters Bay
When: Boxing Day, 1908

Jack Johnson became the first black world heavyweight champion in front of 20,000 people wedged into an outdoor arena in Rushcutters Bay when he defeated Tommy Burns.

Johnson rewrote the rules in and out of the ring throughout his life and demanded that he was paid a proper purse by promoters. The fight was also filmed, and placed Sydney briefly as the sporting epicentre of the world.

In a sport that relies so much on outlandish promotions, Johnson was a skilled pioneer in drawing interest to his fights. He was willing to do anything to sell more tickets, even chasing a Wallaby around an enclosure.

He also provided the gathered global press that included the novelist Jack London with as many interviews as they could handle from his base in Botany while his taciturn Canadian opponent found sanctuary alone in the Blue Mountains.

Johnson was racially abused by the crowd before, during and after the fight. He silenced them with his fists, goading and infuriating their hero Burns. From the grainy footage, you can see the hugely undersized Burns completely at the mercy of Johnson. The police stopped the fight in the 14th round when a knockout seemed certain.

The opportunity to witness Johnson silencing the crowd and changing the world of boxing forever in Rushcutters Bay would be the ultimate magic ticket.
Jonathan Drennan

Jack Johnson taking on Tommy Burns at Rushcutter’s Bay in 1908.Credit: NSW State Library

The event: Australian soccer team versus English professionals

Venue: Sydney Sports Ground
When: July 4, 1925
The Australian captain, James “Judy” Masters, kicks a sizzler into the back of the net, 10 seconds into the match. It stuns the English team and delights the home crowd of 40,000 spectators. The kick, nicknamed “the grass cutter”, involves a teammate from the same Balgownie Rangers club kicking ahead, only for Masters, a slight centre forward but with a powerful right boot, to speed past him and scythe the ball into the net. England put two players on Masters for the remainder of the game and win 2-1.

The previous year, Masters, my grand uncle, was awarded an Honour Cap, bestowed on only two other NSW athletes – Don Bradman and Dally Messenger.

Masters was capped 22 times for Australia. A Gallipoli veteran, he was 28 when he first captained Australia. Sporting legend has it he was the first Australian to take the field wearing the green and gold national colours. (Previously, Australian teams wore blue and maroon).

James ‘Judy’ Masters.

Contemporary newspaper accounts describe him as “the most brainy player to represent Australia” and, in more than 400 games, he was never cautioned. He may not have approved of the behaviour of my Western Suburbs rugby league team of the late 1970s, nor even the sport chosen by his brother’s grandson. Judy died in 1955, aged 62, partly from “black lung” contracted while working as a coal miner but also from losing half a lung when shot in the shoulder at Pozieres on the Western Front.
Roy Masters

The event: Hubert Opperman goes solo for 786km to set a 24-hour record

Venue: Sydney Arena
When: January, 1940

In the decades leading up to World War II, Hubert Opperman became an endurance cycling legend in Australia and Europe. His most famous race was the 1928 Bol d’Or, a 24-hour event paced by tandem bikes in Paris. Oppy won by completing 920km, despite having to ride his interpreter’s clunker for an hour while his two sabotaged racing bikes were fixed. At the encouragement of the crowd, he jumped back on the bike to break the 1000km record.

Just before Oppy enlisted with the Royal Australian Air Force in 1940, he rode solo for 24 hours on a long-gone velodrome called the Sydney Arena in Surry Hills. It remains a staggering feat of physical and mental endurance.

Hubert Opperman in 1934.Credit: Fairfax Media

As he went round … and round … and round, officials applauded as he broke record after record for an unpaced ride. By the end, Oppy had ridden 786km and set 101 records. Cycling guru Phil Bates says it’s “up there with the best rides ever done”. While Oppy returned briefly to competitive cycling after the war, the Sydney ride turned out to be his last great event.
Garry Maddox

The event: Randwick v Balmain first-grade cricket match

Venue: Coogee Oval
When: January 16, 1954

In our garage, there are a set of stumps painted on the back wall with the bowling crease marked at the garage door. Behind the bowling crease, the driveway declines at a 45-degree angle to the street and then across the road into Dot and Lindsay Zberski’s tiered garden.

I spent many hours attempting to find the tennis ball after on- and off-drives hit by my father Des “The Demon” Coady flew past me, went down the slope and ended up in the Zberski’s shrubs.

The Demon was a fair athlete during the late 1940s to mid-50s in Sydney. First grade rugby for Drummoyne, A-grade tennis and first grade cricket for Balmain.

While he sipped a few cold, gold KBs on our balcony I loved hearing the stories about him facing the likes of Alan Davidson (“unplayable when he was swinging the ball”) and Ray Lindwall (“he nearly took my head off”). His favourite player was teammate and leg-spinner Reg Pearce, who once took 10 wickets in a Sheffield Shield match against Victoria. He loved retelling stories of batters falling LBW to “Pearcie’s straighty” – a pre-cursor of Shane Warne’s flipper.

Scoreboard from the Randwick v Balmain first-grade cricket match in January 1954.Credit: Sun-Herald

The scoreboard from the match against Randwick on that Saturday shows Balmain chased Randwick’s first innings of 153 with three wickets down and The Demon finished on 53 not out.

I’d like to think that a few of Randwick fielders had to climb over the fence of Coogee Oval and onto Dolphin Street to retrieve some of his drives, just like I did climbing down the tiers of the Zberski’s garden.
Ben Coady

The event: St George v Western Suburbs grand final

Venue: Sydney Cricket Ground
When: August 24, 1963

As a member of the sporting press, I’ve had a Magic Ticket for the best part of 30 years. We get the best seat in the house and get paid to watch and write about matches or tournaments we’d never have the money to attend.

But if there’s one match I’d love to see, it’s the 1963 NSWRL grand final between my beloved St George Dragons and the Western Suburbs Magpies — a dour slog in the mud at the SCG.

I’ve written so much about this game, for either this masthead or several books, and interviewed many players from either side, it would be nice to actually watch it for myself.

It’s a famous game for a lot of reasons: the Dragons won 8-3, their eighth as part of their 11-year premiership run and their third win in a row against Wests.

It was also the day Sun-Herald photographer John O’Gready took the iconic image of St George captain Norm Provan and Wests counterpart Arthur Summons, both caked in mud and embracing each other. It was turned into the premiership trophy that NRL teams contest today.

Norm Provan (St George) and Arthur Summons (Wests) leave a muddy SCG after the 1963 rugby league grand final.Credit: John O’Gready

But the real reason I want to attend is to see if the game was rigged as Wests players still maintain and St George players vehemently deny. Wests prop and future coaching great Jack Gibson had told his teammates before kick-off that. “We can’t win because [referee] Darcy Lawler has backed St George”. A series of controversial decisions, including a try to winger Johnny King, are still debated today.

I’ve watched grainy footage of this match and one man stands out: St George centre and Immortal Reg Gasnier, dancing along the top of the mud, evading defenders with a poise and grace you rarely see in the NRL these days.
Andrew Webster

The event: Duke Kahanamoku’s surfing demonstration

Venue: Freshwater
When: December, 1914

Not just a seminal moment in Australian sporting and cultural history, but a regularly disputed one too.

So put me on Freshie beach when famed Hawaiian waterman Duke Kahanamoku rolled into town during World War I without a surfboard – believing they were banned in Australia – and commissioned an 8′6, 40 kilogram sugar pine log from carpenters in Glebe.

Photographic evidence unearthed in the past decade dispels the long-held belief that “the Duke” introduced surfing to Sydney that day at Freshwater when he put on a demonstration.

But Manly merchant seaman Tommy Walker was among the locals surfing around the Northern Beaches since at least 1911.

There’s also conjecture that the Duke’s famous tandem ride with a 15-year-old Isabel Lethem actually took place a month later at Dee Why.

The “father of surfing”, Duke Kahanamoku, holding a board, with members of the Cronulla Surf Lifesaving Club in the summer of 1915.

Legend has it Walker also once caught a tiger shark by swimming a seven-pound salmon directly into its mouth, and the Duke came armed with cracking tales of his own.

A five-time Olympic medallist at three separate games, Kahanamoku featured in about 30 movies while living in Los Angeles before being elected sheriff of Honolulu 12 times.
Dan Walsh

The event: NSWRL, round 14, Manly versus St George

Where: Brookvale Oval
When: July 3, 1994

It’s easy to forget just how many strong teams there were in the-then NSWRL during the mid-1990s. In 1994, the Broncos were chasing a hat-trick of premierships, having vanquished St George in the two previous seasons. The great Canberra side who went back-to-back a few years earlier would again be crowned premiers come September.

A few months before that, however, on a sunny Sunday afternoon at Brookvale Oval in front of more than 22,000 fans, the Sea Eagles turned in one of the biggest wins of the decade. That the Dragons, who would make another grand final two years later (they lost to Manly, the Eagles’ only premiership from their own hat-trick of grand final appearances between 1995 and 1997) were on the other end of the 61-0 scoreline only made it more surprising. The Silvertails were on fire that afternoon. Steve Menzies and Terry Hill bagged doubles, while six others crossed for four-pointers including Matthew Ridge, who also added 21 points with his boot.

But where was this eight-year-old Manly fan? On a train platform in Tamworth. In another blast from the past, these were the days of football scores being announced over PA systems throughout the land. My father (a Dragons man from way back) craned his neck and promptly informed me the score was “St George ... 37, Manly 6”.

When did I find out the actual result? I’m not 100 per cent sure. I certainly knew the following weekend, when we were in Sydney and I got my revenge by forcing the old man to take me to Brookvale, where the wondrous 61-0 still had pride of place on the scoreboard. But the week before would have been even better.
James Polson

The event: Professional wrestling (WWF) spectacular featuring Andre the Giant

Where: Sydney Entertainment Centre
When: February 28, 1986

As far as Andres are concerned, there has been an Agassi, a Rieu and even a 3000 gracing the stages.

But there was only one Andre the Giant. The biggest sportsman to ever compete in Australia, the World Wrestling Federation show in the now-disappeared Sydney Entertainment Centre in 1986 would have been quite the experience.

Andre the Giant and Qantas senior passenger agent, Jane Symond, on arriving in Sydney on a 1984 visit.Credit: Antony Matheus Linsen

Andre, his long-time nemesis Big John Studd and Mr Fuji shared the top line on promotional material with King Tonga.

It wasn’t Andre’s first visit to Sydney – he “competed” several times during the 1970s and ’80s, including a chronicled 1974 visit to the Hordern Pavilion.

An internet search reveals Andre was victorious over John Studd in the feature event of this February evening. Who could ever have guessed?
Paul Zalunardo

Read part two on December 26.

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