Mt Albert players celebrate after an Auckland club grand final against Glenora.
The Auckland representative team defeated Redcliffe 30-5 in an Amco Cup rugby league match at Lang Park and The Courier-Mail’s Lawrie Kavanagh led his match report on the fact the Dolphins’ colours had been lowered by “a bunch of amateurs”.
As a fellow journalist and a mate of Lawrie’s (May he Rest in Peace), I know the angle he took was ‘accurate’, but he may not have been aware of the fact Auckland club football was very strong and a side chosen from clubs like Northcote, Mt Albert, Glenora and Otahuhu was always going to be hard to beat.
In 1977 the Auckland rep side defeated Australia, Great Britain and France in matches played in conjunction with the World Series tournament held in Australia and New Zealand that year. So it was no real surprise that ‘Combined Auckland’ should prove too strong for a Dolphins’ side coached by former Test halfback, Barry Muir and captained by …..
Fred Ah Kuoi scored three tries for Auckland while fellow internationals Dennis Williams and Kurt Sorenson each crossed once. Winger David Lepper also scored a try. Redcliffe’s only try was scored by hooker Bob Jones with fullback, Ian ‘Bunny’ Pearce converting.
One of Auckland’s ‘amateurs’ was former All Black fullback Joe Karam who kicked six goals from 10 shots, two of his misses from close range. Karam was far from the best player on the field, with Kurt Sorenson named player of the match. He was pushed for those honors by Williams and a lanky forward by the name of Mark Graham. In one memorable clash Graham took heavyweight Redcliffe prop, Steve Bullow head-on and sent him back several metres.
“Auckland won the scrums 17-11 – not so much through skill but through brute strength,” Kavanagh wrote. “Although the packs were both heavyweight, Auckland’s six appeared more willing to power into it. Few Redcliffe players could be commended but ironically the star in a beaten side was also a Kiwi – winger Brian Gardiner (a former Australian beach sprint champion).”
Gardiner had scored two tries for Redcliffe in a Brisbane Premiership win over Norths at Lang Park three days earlier.
Kavanagh wrote that the Redcliffe display against Auckland was “at times disgustingly weak”.
Auckland were coached by Kiwi Test great Bill Sorensen, Kurt’s uncle.
(While the Auckland players might have been amateurs, it’s not as if the Redcliffe players were full time professionals. They all had jobs and while some were on contracts which included lump sum payments others were just on match payments).
There were a host of other Amco Cup games involving Brisbane and regional clubs played in April, 1976. In the weeks leading up to the Auckland v Redcliffe match Brisbane Brothers had defeated Penrith; Canterbury Bankstown had beaten North Queensland while Riverina had accounted for Valleys. Those matches have been covered in other posts on this site.
Here is a brief summary of the matches which followed the Auckland triumph.
Centre Steve Farquhar; Toowoomba product Wayne Lindenberg; Test hooker John Lang and future Test prop Rod Morris each scored two tries in Easts Tigers’ 38-7 thrashing of another New Zealand provincial side Canterbury, with most of Canterbury’s players coming from the Christchurch competition. Canterbury’s only try was scored by Test winger Mocky Brereton, a Christchurch policeman who hailed from the West Coast of the South Island.
Cronulla-Sutherland defeated Toowoomba 28-5 at Leichhardt Oval. Toowoomba were captained by future Test forward Greg Platz with State forward Peter Connell another member of the Clydesdales’ pack.
In other games Balmain defeated Southern Division 26-9; Sydney Wests defeating New South Wales Country side, Monaro 21-9; Parramatta beat New South Wales North Coast 20-4 and Newtown accounted for Sydney Second Division side Ryde-Eastwood.
Balmain were captained by North Queenslander Greg Bandiera with another Maroon, Dennis Manteit (ex Toowoomba and Brisbane Brothers) also in the pack. A prop in the North Coast side was Danny Morton from Marist Brothers in Lismore, whose son, Troy went on to become a prominent official in the Queensland Rugby League. The Monaro side included former Wallaby John Ballesty who worked at Queanbeyan Leagues Club.
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I can’t find who captained Redcliffe in the loss to Auckland, but I suspect it was one of these three men – Ian ‘Bunny’ Pearce, Brian Winney, John Barber.