Witness explains the blood, sweat and beers that is backdrop to a legal drama

Once more the trial narrative returned to the home of the Newtown Jets rugby league team, a first-grade squad that included both Chris Dawson and his brother Paul in 1975.

Chris Dawson when he played for the Newtown Jets Rugby League team.

And again, after seven weeks of the Chris Dawson murder trial, we were back at the old Henson Park rugby league ground in the then rough-and-tumble suburb of Marrickville, in Sydney’s inner-west, in the mid-1970s.

Once more the trial narrative returned to the home of the Newtown Jets rugby league team, the former “Bluebags”, a first-grade squad that included both Chris Dawson and his brother Paul in 1975.

In a lower grade at that time was Raymond Leslie Lee, now in his late 60s, and he gave evidence on Friday. Lee sported a shaved head and the hint of a beard. He was nuggety of frame, which made sense when he told the court that in his rugby league days his chosen position was lock or five-eighth.

Chris Dawson's former Newtown Jets teammate, witness Ray Lee. Picture: NewsWire/Monique Harmer

Lee was asked about his friendship with Robert Silkman, another of the Newtown Jets alma mater, who had previously given evidence that Chris Dawson had approached Silkman on a plane after a team trip to the Gold Coast in late 1975 and asked him how he could get rid of his wife, Lyn.

Lee evoked not just another era of rugby league but that of the great Australian male. He recalled that significant quantities of alcohol were consumed by the team ­before the flight up to the Gold Coast, on the flight, during the trip, before the flight home, and on the flight home. “Everybody let their hair down,” he said.

He painted a foggy picture of memorable moments in the beer garden of the Surfers Paradise Hotel, where the Jets discovered the Balmain Tigers were also in attendance. Lee recalled it being a “pretty rowdy event”.

He said his childhood friend Silkman had told him what Chris Dawson had allegedly suggested on the plane and that they had discussed it over the years.

Time and again this trial seems to have as its gravitational centre the turf of Henson Park, and the blood and sweat of the game of rugby league. Back in the mid-1970s, it was a tough game for tough men.

Sportswriter Paul Nicholls captured it beautifully. “There was a different kind of physicality back then,” he wrote. “In the 70s there was a rule that applied in the first 10 minutes of every game. It was known as the ‘softening up period’. During this time, apart from biting and stabbing, it was pretty much open slather.” And: “The scrums in those days were debauched cesspits where every vice and wickedness known to mankind was perpetuated.”

The records show that Newtown came 10th out of 12 teams in 1975. The grand final was contested by Easts and St George. Easts flogged the Dragons 38-0. The game featured head-high tackles, shoulder charges and the vice and wickedness Nicholls wrote about. The great Graham “Changa” Langlands, the St George fullback, was reduced to a rag doll.

Grand final 1975. Violence. Injury. Big hits. Exhausted combatants. Tickertape on the field. Advertisements for Smith’s Crisps and Craven Mild on the fence around the SCG.

If the Dawson trial were a stage play, this would be its canvas backdrop.