BY STAFF WRITERS
Curtis Woodward’s FootyTown app is out, about and in full-swing, with over 1200 locations and now available on the App Store and Google Play.
While we’re always adding new locations on a daily basis – it’s hard to ignore one figure who features heavily already.
That man is Jack Gibson.
Iconic coach, bustling prop-forward, SP bookie, father, illegal gambling den doorman.
Gibson currently features in 34 locations across Sydney.
Here’s ten of the best…
JACK GIBSON’S FUR COAT
There’s many stories about Jack Gibson’s kangaroo fur coat. One goes he lost it travelling to the USA. His wife hated the thing and said it weighed a tonne. So much so, it gave Jack a back strain but he refused to take it off at the SCG at the grand final in 1986. Englishman and Wests Magpies legend Harvey Howard tells another story. He says that after winning the 2000 NRL premiership with the Broncos, Howard went to see Gibson before he returned to England. After refusing, Howard accepted the coat from Jack. The bustling tough man then says he loaded the coat into his Aussie car which was to be shipped by sea back to the United Kingdom. The car was stolen by a thief before being loaded at the docks. Cops found the car weeks later but the crook says he chucked the jacket days earlier.
CUMBERLAND HOTEL
Jack Gibson was a very talented opening bowler and played several seasons of first grade cricket for Easts while still playing professional footy. History says Easts and the Bankstown cricket club never got on. After a day’s play, Easts players walked up the road to the old Cumberland Hotel for a cold beer. Bankstown players followed them in and sat at the other side of the pub and started getting into the Easts players. In Andrew Webster’s “Supercoach: The Life and Times of Jack Gibson”, Gibson put his beer down and said, “won’t be long, fellas.”
Big Jack stood up, walked over and punched three of them off their seats and returned back to his beer. On another visit to a Bankstown pub, Gibson was swarmed and belted by a pack of drinkers. He returned a week later with his Easts front-row partner Terry Fearnley and some proffesional boxers, entering via different doors. Gibson got his revenge.
ANGLICAN PRESS
Here comes another Jack Gibson story which includes a young Rupert Murdoch and a young Kerry Packer. In 1960, a turf war between Murdoch and the Packers was unleashed on Sydney’s streets with Clyde Packer, Kerry and “muscle men” breaking into the offices of Anglican Press and assaulting staff. A few years earlier, Rupert Murdoch had attended Thommos 2 Up and befriended Jack Gibson. After several phone calls, workers at the illegal gambling dens were sent to Queen Street in Chippendale on behalf of Murdoch – including Gibson. While Gibson and Kerry would become mates years later, Tom Prior wrote in his 1993 book ‘The Sinner’s Club’, that Kerry “really copped a thumping”. Rupert himself was receiving “blow-by-blow” updates on the phone from former Mirror editor Ian Smith.
GAVIN MILLER
In a game at Endeavour Field in late 1980, young Cronulla centre Gavin Miller hit Parramatta legend Mick Cronin with an awful high shot which actually left Miller with a broken thumb and a visit to Sutherland Hospital.
After surgery, Miller woke up in his bed, to find incoming Parramatta coach Jack Gibson and assistant Ron Massey for 1981, in his room.
A groggy Miller took a moment before realising the legendary coach and colourful Sydney identity was at the end of his bed – alongside Massey.
After a few choice words, the pair left.
According to Andrew Webster in ‘Supercoach’, Miller never played dirty again.
JACK GIBSON
“In a peculiar event, a group of Easts players that included budding front-rower star Jack Gibson left the club during the [1954] season and went bush to play for Grenfell. Gibson and a couple of others had connections with a famous but illegal Sydney institution, Thommo’s Two-Up School, and quietly left town when the temperature around Thommo’s became rather too warm due to increased pressure from the authorities” – ‘A Centenary of Rugby League’.
For the record, Gibson’s last match in ’54 was a round nine match, on June 6, against Newtown at Henson Park.
According to Rugby League Project, just one other first grade player from Easts played their last game of the season that day, Gibson’s fellow prop Allan Wilson.
THOMMO’S TWO-UP SCHOOL
Ex-boxer George Guest ran several illegal gambling rooms for decades across Sydney. Two of these were on Wentworth Avenue where legendary coach Jack Gibson worked as a bouncer in his formative years as a first grade footy player. Infamous crooks from the Razor Wars were often visitors, including Phil ‘The Jew’ Jeffs and Guido Caletti. In later years, Gibson ran the games. ‘Thommos’, and address, could change one night to the other, and went on for decades.
JACK GIBSON & ARTHUR BEETSON
At the end of 1984, great mates Arthur Beetson and Jack Gibson were back in the big league and set to coach respective clubs, Eastern Suburbs and Cronulla-Sutherland for the 1985 season. While playing golf together at The Lakes, as told to Andrew Webster in Jack’s book ‘Supercoach’, Gibson offered ‘Artie’ a handshake and made a pact that they wouldn’t steal each others players.
Balmain’s cult hero Olsen Filipaina had shook Gibson’s hand and agreed to join the Sharks in ’85. At the last second, Olsen rang Jack and told him he had signed with Easts for more money.
It was the first of two rifts between Jack and Arthur.
Beetson refuted of any such agreement with his friend.
“It was Arthur’s decision and as far I’m concerned we’re finished,” Jack told The Mirror.
The pair would make up but had another bust-up when Beetson used some of Jack’s coaching manuals “without permission.”
GEORGE FREEMAN’S WEDDING
On 6 August 1981 Sydney underworld boss George Freeman married 24-year-old Georgina McLoughlin at St Stephen’s Uniting Church… it was Freeman’s second marriage. With no surprise, there were many interesting characters at the wedding, including NSWRL boss Kevin Humphreys.
A scandalous ABC Four Corners investigation from Chris Masters [brother of legendary coach, Roy] in 1983 revealed corruption at the highest end of town and included Humphreys when it was revealed Humphreys had a very serious gambling addiction.
As revealed by Chris Masters, Humphreys was also a friend of gangster and SP bookie, Freeman.
From Andrew Webster’s ‘Supercoach: The Life and Times of Jack Gibson’:
“Then Masters outlined, in atomic detail, how Humphreys had misappropriated $52219 from the Balmain Leagues Club in 1976 – and how Jack had lent him $34000 to repay some of the debt.”
Others to loan Humphreys money included Manly-Warringah secretary and fellow NSWRL board member Ken Arthurson [$5000].
“From 31 July 1974, Humphreys began, according to later charges, to ‘fraudulently take and apply for his own use and benefit’ moneys from a cash float held by the club. By 11 August 1975, he had left eight vouchers for sums totalling $19 940. On 18 February 1976, a partner of the club’s auditors conducted a cash count at the club in the presence of Humphreys. This disclosed a deficiency of $30 579 not covered by vouchers. A week later, Humphreys told the auditor that ‘he loaned this to a friend who was in financial trouble’ some time in the previous month, and the loan would be repaid within a month. Humphreys later told the Royal Commission he lost the money in various forms of gambling.
“Within the next ten days, Humphreys obtained loans totalling $52 000, in the form of bank cheques, from four people: John Arthur Gibson, professional football coach. $34 000; Ken Arthurson, secretary-manager of the Manly-Warringah Rugby League Football Club, $5000; Norman [Latchem] Robinson, former secretary / manager of the Balmain Leagues Club, $6000; Geoffrey William Gardiner, company director, a sum, presumably the balance of $7000 to make up the $52 000. Humphreys deposited the cheques in the club’s bank account on 4 and 8 March 1976.
“A week after the last deposit, the executive committee of the NSW Rugby League, of which Arthurson was a member, recommended that Humphreys be appointed to a ten-year contract as full-time executive director of the NSWRL. The general committee approved the recommendation. Humphreys negotiated a loan of $36 000 from the NSWRL. Seven years later, in May 1983, it was revealed that he had paid $6000 off the loan, and still owed the NSWRL, $29 000” – netk.net.au/Whitton/Worms16.asp
JUDY GIBSON
In 1952, ‘Miss Bondi’ Judy Worrad [pictured right] won the ‘Miss Pacific’ beauty pageant. She would then marry Jack Gibson.
“In 1954, she was a beautiful, young Bondi girl, who had been crowned Miss Bondi and Miss Pacific; he was from a poor family with a farmlet in semi-rural Caringbah.
”When he arrived an hour late for their first date, she told her parents, “tell him I’m out”.
He kept calling, and eventually convinced her to come outside, where she found his car bursting with flowers” – St George Leader, 2016.
“I think one of the secrets of our long life together lies in the different roles we took and in the different directions our interests took us,” Judy wrote Ian Heads’ ‘A Sporting Life’.
“I believe the sort of independence we‘ve had is healthy. As long as you end up in the same place…that’s what matters.”
OUTLAW SUNDAY COMPETITION
The NSWRL were very much anti-Sunday and scheduled the majority of their games on Saturdays as Sundays were considered a day of rest and to frequent church. Occassional games were played on Sundays if venues were pre-booked or for other reasons. This left a market in the 1940s and 1950s for colourful footy characters, bookmakers, race types and punters to get behind an unsanctioned outlaw Sunday rugby league competition played at various Eastern Suburbs and Inner-West venues like Rushcutters Park and Waverley Oval. The teams were fairly strong and made up of lower grade players, some former internationals and rugby union stars playing under pseudonyms to save their ‘amateur status’. Teams included La Perouse All Blacks, The Wharfies, Celebrity Club, Bing and Swing and Bondi Lifesavers.
The Celebrity Club team, featuring a young Jack Gibson, was backed by the nightclub’s owner and famous Sydney identity, Joe Taylor.
According to reports, one game between The Wharfies and Bing and Swing at Waverley Park ended in chaos with players from both sides in on seperate bookie’s fixes. One bookie had the Wharfie’s kicker in his pocket while a forward for Bing and Swing had taken bribes from another. The forward had been penalised constantly throughout the game and doing everything he could to get the opposition over the line. So much so that after being penalised for a scrum infringement, the referee had no choice but to march them down the field because the forward wouldn’t shut up. This left the Wharfies with a kick from right in front of the posts to win the game. The Wharfies goalkicker had missed every shot in the match and proceeded to miss [quite obviously] his kick which anyone could have thrown over.
The crowd went crazy throwing bottles and food at the players as police made several arrests.
