Redcap's BRL

The father, the son and the Valley trinity: 1971 in the Brisbane Rugby League

Before we get to the father, the son and the bit about Valleys, it’s worth taking time to acknowledge the end of the Norths hegemony.

For 12 seasons from 1959 through 1970, the Devils dominated the Brisbane Rugby League, winning eight premierships, six minor premierships, nine cup titles and establishing themselves as arguably rugby league’s greatest club team not named St George.

Over those 12 seasons, they won 190 of 274 games (69.3%), which doesn’t actually compare that well to the Dragons – 214 of 267 (80%) during their hegemony from 1955 to ’67 (yes, I know they only won 11 titles, but they were very good on either side).

A fair bit of the difference is undoubtedly due to Norths having to deal with much more change in personnel given the increasing player drain to NSW, as well as Bob Bax’s tendency toward tinkering, experimentation and worryingly slow starts to a few seasons.

Regardless of how you slice it up, the Devils won almost all the games which mattered, with the defeat to a very good Brothers team in the 1967 decider really the only blot on a very neat copy book. They lost to an inconsistent Valleys team in 1970 as well, but by this point the Norths team was looking a bit thin and the talent of the emerging Valleys team was plainly evident.

While Norths did make the finals again in 1971, they’d been surpassed by Valleys, Easts and, to a lesser extent, Souths, with the likes of Brothers and Redcliffe also nipping at their hegemonic heels. 1972 would be the first time in what must have felt like forever to a generation of BRL supporters that Norths missed the finals.

Bob Bax was gone from the head coaching job, though he would remain a prominent figure at the club for years to come, looking over the shoulder of a few coaches in the 1970s. Ian Massie, five-time premiership-winning forward, was the man who inherited the top job in ’71, and, predictably, he didn’t last long. While he did well to cobble together an effective team in the second half of the season and finish fourth, it was largely based around veterans like Ray Cattanach, Peter Hall and Don Simpson. More legacy than renewal.

The Norths hegemony also had quite a bit to do with a premiership drought just down the road at Fortitude Valley. The Diehards’ 1970 title was their first since ’57, and it was the first of four Valleys would win in the first half of the 1970s as the club reasserted itself as the preeminent force in Brisbane rugby league.

While their passage to the 1970 decider had involved an enormous slice of luck, there was nothing lucky about 1971. Norths were on the slide, Easts were on the up but not quite there yet, while Souths’ second-place finish was perhaps a little flattering. The Magpies did beat Valleys twice during the season, not to mention a remarkable 47-17 win over Norths in round nine, but faded badly during the season’s third phase and bowed out of the finals in straight sets.

It was a serene passage for the Diehards – eight wins from their last nine regular season games following defeat to Souths in round 12. A narrow but convincing win over a short-handed Souths team in the Major Semi-Final, and after a tight tussle with Easts in the first half of the Grand Final, a comfortable 18-10, premiership-clinching victory.

Marty Scanlan’s broken jaw and a subsequent mid-season swoon which also coincided with representative season were Valleys’ only worries. Scanlan missed six weeks of football but was back by round 19. Leon ‘Moose’ McGuire, who sadly passed away just a few weeks before I wrote this, came back from injury the previous weekend and Valleys had a formidable unit heading into the finals.

There wasn’t really a weakness, even if some of the lesser lights were not widely appreciated. As Jack Reardon remarked in the Courier Mail after the round 16 game against Souths, “I know Valleys appreciate the value of second rower John Crilly , but few other club supporters do… Crilly, who was an Ipswich Bulimba Cup team discard, is a good footballer in all departments”. “Then there was Jeff Gill turning on another top rate game; Tony Perkins always on the ball…”

In another report, Reardon described hooker Hugh O’Doherty as a “pocket Hercules with the speed of a threequarter”. It seems O’Doherty could not only forage for the ball – the traditional job of a hooker – but was a devastating runner from dummy-half, a strength few in his position had up to that point.

Then there was rangy young centre Gerry Fitzpatrick, who came into the team in round 13 ahead of the solid but unspectacular Ron Gurnett, perfectly complementing veteran centre and captain Mick Retchless and providing the Diehard backline with another attacking dimension. Good luck stopping that lot.

And nobody could – Valleys didn’t just win the premiership (and the minor premiership), they took the President’s Cup and the Scott Trophy to complete their own holy trinity for 1971 and send Retchless off into the sunset with the perfect set of retirement gifts.

‘But what’s this about the father and the son?’, I hear you ask.

Well, remarkably, 37-year-old Paul Pyers, who debuted for Easts all the way back in 1955 and who hadn’t been spotted in the BRL since ’57, was back as captain-coach of Wynnum-Manly.

The Seagulls’ team of ’71 had a bit of the greatest hits of yesteryear about it. Peter Theofanes, veteran former state prop Trevor Niebling and the husky Bob Stone were back after some time away. They even had a part-time centre called Rod Stewart. Young forward utility Len Brunner won the Rothman’s Medal for player of the year, and Wynnum were an interesting combination, at least for a few weeks early in the season.

Before long, the usual malaise set in (for everybody except the excellent Brunner), and on the eve of round 13 the club’s correspondent to Rugby League News reported that, “once again nothing worthwhile for the senior grades except more disappointment and more failure. Still the world lives on hope and we are just going to keep on trying…’ Poor old Wynnum!

The Seagulls of ’71 did at least contribute something to the field of rugby league trivia when, in round 19, Paul Pyers Junior took the field alongside his father, Paul Senior. The only other example of this in rugby league I’m aware of was a couple of games in 1924 when the great ‘Tedda’ Courtney played alongside his son Ted Courtney Junior for Western Suburbs of Sydney.

Pyers Junior and Senior would go on to repeat the feat a couple of times in 1972, which gives them the lead over the Courtneys in games played together as far as I can gather.

Are there any other father-son teammates in top-flight rugby league history? Answers on a postcard please.

Details of every game, players and point-scorers are available from the 1971 season page. Thanks for visiting and stay tuned for more complete BRL seasons.