Away Days: North Sydney Bears v Newtown Jets

Memories of Sydney's rugby league heyday come flooding back when beanie-wearing Bluebag supporters crack a tinnie or two under the fig tree at Bear Park

Lote Tuqiri
Still going strong: Lote Tuqiri in action for West Tigers in 2012. Photograph: Action Photographic/Renee McKay/AAP

Remember that show Ripping Yarns that was on telly around 1978 and had such episodes as "Murder at Moorstones Manor”, “Roger of the Raj” and "The Testing of Eric Olthwaite”? Never heard of it? Never mind. Because if you can download it or however people watch olden days television in these modern times (suck it onto an android?), I would advise that you do. Created by Michael Palin and Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, there’s a dozen or so episodes, and it’s pretty funny stuff.

My favourite is “Golden Gordon”, about a mad football fan, Gordon Ottershaw (Palin), who supports a small club called Barnstoneworth United. So mad a fan is Gordon that his son’s names are “Barnstoneworth” and “United”, and breakfast conversation features recitations of the names of every Barnstoneworth United team from the club’s inception. Once successful in the Yorkshire Premier League, Barnstoneworth United now lose every game, after which Gordon returns home to smash up all his furniture.

Too lazy to think up a segue we’ll take you straight into present tense and a schooner at “Percy’s Bar” in the venerable North Sydney Hotel for the pre-game build-up to the Frank Hyde Shield match between North Sydney Bears and Newtown Jets. The two “Establishment” rugby league clubs have been about since 1908, and both have storied histories, and glory days long behind them.

Yet unlike Barnstoneworth United, both clubs cling on as entities, their top-grade teams playing in the NSW Cup as reserve grade feeders for South Sydney Rabbitohs (Bears) and Eastern Suburbs Roosters (Jets), another pair of Establishment clubs. It’s a long and sometimes sad story, and a rich tapestry.

Like the carpet at Percy’s. Established in 1927 and “boasting Sydney’s first drive-thru bottle shop”, Percy’s is all maroon carpet and rustic fittings, and wouldn’t have changed much since 1927. There’s a bunch of different beers, TVs with sport on them, and droid-machines into which gamblers pour money, such are the times.

I’m here with some golfing mates, notably Don McKinnon, who played 183 games for North Sydney from 1977-87 and wasn’t far off being prop in the Bears Team of the Century. A former policeman and old-fashioned “walloper”, Big Donny was a powerful proposition in full flight, and had a mantra for opposition defensive line that went: “Don’t tackle high and you won’t get the elbow.”

McKinnon’s Bears played their last National Rugby League first-grade game in Townsville, a 28-18 win over North Queensland Cowboys. Soon enough, with the tendrils of the Super League war engulfing all that was once tribal and good about rugby league, the Bears entered into an ever-doomed merger with hated local rivals Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles. And so a terrible entity was born: Northern Eagles. Riven by factionalism, by the end of 2002, Manly took over as Manly again, and the Bears went back to being the Bears. Which for a while was effectively nothing.

And here we are.

The Newtown Jets, meanwhile, didn’t have any money, and folded in 1983, just two years after they’d made the grand final. Yet the club, bless it, survives. And it still has fans. And indeed at Henson Park on any given Sunday they sit on their hill and drink tinnies from eskies, and buy blue-and-white merchandise in relatively big numbers. And when they play the Bears they come to Percy’s in their jumpers, beanies and scarves. And you realise: if you follow either of these teams, you are a True Believer. You can empathise with Golden Gordon. And you are a bit of a kook.

And so across the road and into North Sydney Oval, once known as “Bear Park”, now North Sydney Oval. There’s a bunch of old stands with old blokes’ names on them, with corrugated roofs, faded green paint and long bench seating. There are long swathes of grass on the hill. There’s a selection of VB, Tooheys and light beer at the bar.

And there at the northern end sits the majestic old Moreton Bay fig tree from whose boughs have swung generations of Bear cubs. The fig is North Sydney Oval. That and the cauterised skin tissue of all the old Bears, the sun-baked cricket pitch part of the ground was once harder than the hardest iron.

The Jets run out, a bunch of well-muscled chunky men typical of these modern times. If one of these guys had looked like this in McKinnon’s time he’d have been seen as an engorged superman, a freak, something to be feared. Today, even the wingers are bulked up like cricket ball-stuffed condoms.

There’s the Bears’ mascot, a mangy black Wookie thing. There’s the great Lote Tuqiri, running about in the centres for the Bears. He’s won premierships with the Broncos, Bledisloe Cup Tests for the Wallabies. It’s both admirable (what a clubman) and sad (given past glories) that the 35-year-old is still playing. But then, what else would he be doing? Playing parcheesi? He’s being paid to play footy. Good luck to him.

My mate Blacky, another one-time walloper, introduces me to an old colleague of his and Donny’s, Mick Drury. Nice fella. Later Blacky explains that Mick, a former undercover detective working for the drug squad, was once shot with several .357 calibre hollow-point bullets while on duty.

So how about them apples? Rich tapestry.

And so to kick-off and it’s a willing affair of reserve grade standard, as one might expect. And initially the Bears get belted. The club’s last first grade premiership was in 1922. Their last grand final was when Frank Hyde captain-coached in 1934. And it seems they could do worse than resurrect a few of those old boys because early on it’s all Jets. The “Bluebags” fling the ball around and bash the Bears like Rocky in the meat locker.

But the Bears come back. Bear attack! There’s a backline movement and a winger flies through the air and plants the ball in the corner. Our referee in pink, bereft of television replays, looks to both touch judges and, in the time-honoured way, points to the spot with a hand shaped like a karate-chop hand, puts the whistle to his mouth and blows the very pea out of it. Good times.

Then there’s some push-and-shove and such-forth as a Bears’ player lies prostrate on the ground. A dozen medical types come out to assist, and our man is put into a neck-brace and onto a stretcher. I see his father and brother, all eyes, waiting to meet the stretcher as the player’s taken off. Dad leans down to talk to son. Alex McKinnon wouldn’t be far from his mind. (On this occasion, our man will make a full recovery.)

And so the show goes on, as the show must, and the Bears score again. The AC/DC song “TNT” plays over the speaker system. And it’s a four-point game, the Jets up 20-16. Then the Jets score again and lead by 10. And then they win. And then we leave.