FLASHBACK: July 1948

JULY 1948

The Courier-Mail’s Jack Reardon wrote a hard hitting column, calling for the axing of under performing players from Brisbane first grade teams.

Reardon, a former Australian Test centre, said the competition needed a “thorough weeding out of the untidy growth of consistently poor players, whose presence is an obstruction to the development of younger players”.

He said some players were making the same errors and incurring the same penalties for rule infringements they were making two years earlier.

“Why should grown men, who either refuse to learn, or are of incapable of learning, be retained in an A grade side when younger, keener players are available from the lower grades,” Reardon wrote.

“These post war veterans, mostly reached A grade during the war-caused slack, which reached its depth in 1945.

“Must youth be forced to remain in the lower grades until the veterans finally convince themselves that they are past the age of usefulness?

“It appears they only have to let it be known that they will be available for the season, and the lower grade players meriting promotion are told to wait until next season. Rugby league is a young man’s game.”

Souths’ winger, Bill Cameron won The Courier-Mail Best and Fairest Player award for the first weekend of July. Cameron learned his football at West End School. Cameron was in his second year of first grade football.

Souths announced they would hold a farewell function for their Kangaroos, Bill Tyquin and Len Pegg at the West End School of Arts, with the Australian team to assemble in Sydney on July 27. Valleys farewelled Duncan Hall and Jack Horrigan at Oddfellows Hall, Fortitude Valley.

Wests’ trainer, Len Furness, who would be trainer for the ‘Roos, was farewelled at the Baroona ALP Hall, Caxton Street, Petrie Terrace.

Former Valleys’ winger, Len Kenny, who was playing for Leeds in England, tipped Great Britain to win the series. Kenny said Wigan halfback, Tommy Bradshaw, who played two Tests against the Kiwi tourists in 1947, was a potential superstar.