Soem

Most Rugby League fans are aware of the battles between the Fibros and the Silvertails but the origins of this fierce rivalry involving Sydney clubs Wests and Manly are rarely told. The game’s official history, (A Centenary of Rugby League, 1908-2008), traces the genesis of a feud that dominated the Sydney premiership in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. The following is an edited excerpt from the outstanding history compiled for the game’s Centenary by Ian Heads and David Middleton:

Although an ambitious promotion by the Fitzroy VFL club turned out to be a spectacular failure, it did spawn one of rugby league’s greatest rivalries.

The ‘Festival of Football’, staged at Fitzroy’s Junction Oval on March 18, 1978, was designed to bring together three football codes on the one program.

However, with almost no promotion, only a few hundred spectators were on hand to watch the event begin with a trial match between low-ranking VFL teams Fitzroy and Footscray. That was followed by a Marconi-Footscray soccer match and finally, the rugby league ‘exhibition’ between Manly and Western Suburbs. Referee Jack Danzey believed it would be a routine trial match; it turned out to be anything but.

The first half erupted into a nasty series of brawls; high tackles and get-squares behind the play. Wests coach Roy Masters had observed Manly’s players at close quarters when the teams travelled together to Melbourne and believed that their attitude was ‘arrogant and superior’. This perception and the Magpies’ response to it was the genesis of the “Fibros versus Silvertails” rivalry that would have an incendiary impact on the game every time the teams met over the next four years. Manly won the Melbourne trial 12-5 but two players (John Gray and John Gibbs) required hospital treatment while forwards Ian Thomson and Terry Randall both suffered back injuries. The feud escalated when the teams locked horns in a premiership game at Lidcombe Oval later in 1978. A wild brawl featuring rival forwards John Donnelly and Terry Randall and the later dismissal of Manly winger Steve Knight ensured that the Melbourne madness was far from a one-off event.

Excerpt from: A Centenary of Rugby League, 1908-2008 – The Definitive Story of the Game in Australia, by Ian Heads and David Middleton. Published by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd.