By STEVE MASCORD, Sydney Morning Herald, Friday January 31 1997
ROD REDDY first walked onto Kogarah Oval some time very early in 1972, as an 18-year-old from central Queensland.
He doesn’t remember much about the training session; there was certainly very little that night to indicate he would go on to play 16 Tests for Australia, or star on two Kangaroo Tours, or play a part in the birth of State of Origin.
Just a few drills, a few laps of the oval and a few drinks at the pub afterwards. But Reddy, now 45, recalled this week being taken aside by legendary Saints secretary Frank Facer towards the end of the same season, a debut year which exceeded his wildest dreams.
“I remember Facer saying to me, ‘Son, you’ll coach this club one day’,” Reddy said from Adelaide, a long way from Kogarah.
“At the end of 1995, 1 remember hearing his words in my head. I had plenty of flashbacks. It wasn’t easy.”
Reddy hasn’t spoken at any length in public about the events of November and December 1995. For a start, he was legally bound not to do so until at least March last year.
He fulfilled Facer’s prediction on August 8, 1995, when he was named St George first-grade coach for the following year. Brian Smith had left for Bradford, the club had abandoned merger talks with Sydney City, and chief executive Geoff Carr was on the way to being “let go”.
What was to unfold over the next four months made Reddy one of the most controversial figures in the famous club’s colourful history. By the end of the year, Reddy had departed for the still nonexistent Adelaide Rams, leaving Saints without a coach just two months out from their first game and in the greatest period of uncertainty the club had ever known.
“When Saints took me to court, they put a clause in my contract that I wasn’t allowed to say anything about my departure until March,” Reddy said.
“I think they were worried I’d go around bagging them. I don’t want to bag the club; I’m proud to have played there and proud to have coached there.”
But listen to “Rocket” tell it now, and Saints officials gave him little alternative but to leave.
“It wasn’t me who started talking to Super League; it was the board,” he said, “or at least a third party co-opted by someone on the board.”
Reddy claimed he was told by “a very influential member of the Saints board” that the club would not have a rugby league team in two or three years’ time.
“That meant I was going to be laid off; I had to look for another job,” Reddy said. “Five days before I left, I was still very much a part of the St George club.”
Somehow, Reddy ended up at the Rams, and Saints stayed with the Australian Rugby League. And then Super League was outlawed.
“There were times when I wondered if I made the right decision,” said Reddy, who watched last-minute stand-in David Wake take the Dragons to the grand final last year. “It hurt a bit when people said I’d made the dumbest decision of the year. But I just had to bite my tongue and hang in there.”
Rupert Murdoch answered only three or four questions after News Ltd’s annual shareholders meeting in Adelaide late last year.
So it’s easy to understand how unpopular one shareholder made himself with journalists when he asked: “Will the Rams be on free-to-air?”
Murdoch, apparently taken aback, began talking about an American football team before he was nudged in the right direction by one of his aides.
Still, the answer to the question remains unclear.
The day the Herald visited the Rams training camp in suburban Oakden, Adelaide was baked in the sort of desert heat that makes the Gobi seem like a tropical paradise. Under a tree on a training field adjoining the Rams’ administrative complex, Reddy tossed a ball in the air as he addressed the day’s training group halves and hookers. New recruit Kerrod Walters, Papuan bar-fridge impersonator Elias Paiyo, stocky halfback Stuart Topper and versatile Queenslander Dean Schifilliti looked on, swatting flies.
The difference between Reddy’s old club and his current employer are striking reminders of the contrasts between the old league world and the new. St George are funded by a poker-machine palace and have their headquarters within the leagues club, while the Rams, funded by pay television, are based in a massive office block which boasts a mess hall, weights room, accommodation for juniors and more floor space than the headquarters of Super League and the ARL combined.
There are people whose full-time job it is to make sure the players are comfortable. All relocation costs were met by News Ltd, former Cowboys first-grade coach Grant Bell is the full-time junior development officer and Reddy refers to training as “coming to work”.
Schifilliti, raised in sweltering north Queensland, said he had been looked after and liked the place.
“But it’s bloody hot,” he said, sucking on a water bottle.
The chief executive is Liz Dawson, the 38-year-old former Auckland Warriors marketing chief and only the second woman to head a rugby league club in recent memory.
She said the Rams were just like any other News Ltd enterprise – Ansett, the Adelaide Advertiser or Foxtel.
“Our charter is to move into profit as soon as possible,” Dawson said in her air-conditioned office.
“Being a franchise situation, I would imagine there is eventually an opportunity for private ownership in the place.
“News, being a business organisation, would have to look at that when the time comes.” But are the Rams even recognisable as a football club, or just a provider of programming for a television network?
“I think that’s fair comment, but would you say the same of American sport?” Dawson said.
“I think if you watch something on television and there’s no-one in the stadium it isn’t a good event for television. But if you hear the crowd in the background then it’s more exciting.”
The club that TV rights built? “You’re really harsh,” she replied, without disagreeing. The novelty of going to Adelaide Oval, under lights, to see a new sport is one plus for the Rams.
“They don’t understand ARL v Super League down here,” said Reddy, “they just know they’re getting a rugby league team.”
On the other hand, the Rams have an extra competitor this year with Port Adelaide joining the Australian Football League.
And then there are the persistent doubts about the Rams’ playing depth. A quick look at the Rams’ roster shows what appear to be some significant imbalances. Three hookers Schifilliti, Walters and Paiyo, no recognised five-eighth and very little depth in the three-quarter line.
“The club was thrown together in a rush, and the best job was done with the available players,” Dawson said.
But many players have at least enhanced their reputations during the past 12 months: Marty McKenzie and Rod Maybon both had a good year with Parramatta, Kevin Campion made the grand final with St George, Joe Tamam was a revelation with Bradford and Mark Corvo played much of the year in first grade for Canberra.
Only 14 players are contracted for 1998. Reddy, who left a number of spots open last year in case there was a flood of players from the ARL, still has the door ajar.
“We’re not going to win every week,” said Dawson. It may turn out to be the understatement of the year.
The Rams begin their belated debut season next Thursday with a game against Auckland in Nuku’alofa, Tonga.Before Justice Burchett called a halt to everything last year, they pushed Canberra and flogged Perth m trials.
The club’s marketing department is negotiating with some multinationals for naming rights and sleeve sponsors.
Utility Chris Quinn, a former Dragon, has been named club captain. And Reddy could be excused for not giving much thought to what St George supporters think of him
But he has a fair idea.
Believe it or not, he went back to Kogarah Oval last year. It was round 16, the Dragons were at home to Western Suburbs and “Rocket” was a guest at an “Internationals Day”. He was paraded around the oval in a open-top car. The crowd reaction?
“What do you think?” he said. “It was . . . mixed.
“Obviously some people don’t like the decision I made, but I have to think of my family and my future.
“No-one can take away the fact that I played for St George, that I coached there and I’m proud of what I achieved there.
“Some of the people who’ve been critical, if they were brutally honest with themselves and they were placed in the same position as me, they may very well have made the same decision.”
Reddy is satisfied he can look old Frank Facer in the eye on Judgment Day and say he did what he thought was best.
“He made me feel special that night, when he said one day I’d be coach,” said Reddy. “Then again, for all I know he could have said that to every kid who showed up at the joint”
