BY STAFF WRITERS
Curtis Woodward’s FootyTown app is out, about and in full swing, with 1350 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 John ‘Chook’ Raper.
The future Immortal was an incredibly important cog in St George’s untouchable eleven-straight premierships, but he could also party just as hard as he trained and played.
Raper currently features in 30 locations across Sydney.
Here’s ten of the best…
JOHNNY RAPER & MAURIE RAPER
While Johnny Raper’s wife was in labour, John’s youngest brother Maurie, at 17, was in charge of looking after his older brother. John suited the young Maurie up and took him to the Latin Quarter. Maurie fell asleep. John then decided to drive home to Miranda and was speeding at such a rate that he had several police cars following him back the house. Chook’s excuse to the police every time was that he was in a rush to get home to get some sleep and start training for the next game. t worked every time.
PETER LAWFORD & SHIRLEY MACLAINE
Former home of famous advertising legend John Singleton. His great mate Johnny Raper, who could party like no other, tells a yarn in his book about some of the celebrities he hung out with back in the day. “On one memorable night I found myself sitting on the floor in Singo’s place with either his first or second wife. On either side of me were Peter Lawford and Shirley Maclaine. Shirley Maclaine! At one stage I think I proposed to her but she reminded me that Caryl [wife] was there and that was that. What a magnificent lady.”
JOHN RAPER
Young policeman John Raper was almost shot in the head and possibly killed as a rookie cop while attending a robbery at a gun shop in Haymarket in the 1950s. As the thief ran out of the shop, Raper’s boss put the shoulder in and knocked the crook to the ground with the gun going off and sliding passed Raper’s ear.
CLEO MAGAZINE
Through close mate and marketing mogul John Singleton, John Raper agreed to a Cleo photoshoot at Giles’ Baths in Coogee in retirement where the ‘Bowler Hat’ featured once again. This time, Raper would appear in the magazine naked – with only ‘little Johnny’ covered by the bowler hat.
From his own book written by Alan Clarkson:
“For the second time in my new life in showbusiness, I took the coward’s way out and didn’t tell Caryl what I had done. At a conservitive estimate, Cleo had been on the streets all of five minutes when one of Caryl’s friends rang her to tell her the news. Mrs Raper was not amused.”
From The Dictionary of Sydney website:
“Point at North Coogee on the old Giles Gym site in Roddingham Reserve that was renamed Dolphin Point to commemorate the six members of the Coogee Dolphins rugby league club who were killed in the Bali Bombings in 2002. A memorial on the site lists the names of 20 residents of the Eastern suburbs who were killed in the bombings.”
JOHNNY RAPER & JACK BAXTER
Years ago, Sydney’s Domain hosted a lunchtime competition which included Sydney Police Cadets which featured a young John Raper. Crowds and opposition hated the Cadets team, to the point where NSW Police changed their entry to include all rugby league and rugby union players on the force. Things drastically changed. In one game, student demonstrators showed up and Raper tells in his book, with Alan Clarkson, how rugby union forward, 9-time Wallaby and fellow copper Jack Baxter had been fighting with demonstrators for days. Baxter requested Raper kick the ball as high as he could and toward the crowd. The ball set-sail for the demonstrators in the crowd with Baxter and colleagues “attacking” the ball.
From classicwallabies.com.au:
“Baxter’s life changed forever in January, 1950 following an explosion in the seamen’s mess deck of the supply ship H.M.A.S. Tarakan on Sydney Harbour. The press of the day wrote: ‘The violent blast buckled the decks, lifted the stern of the 2,300-ton ship out of the water and entombed the men in a gas-filled, inferno-like messroom’. In endeavoring to escape from the flames Baxter pushed his head out a porthole and rescuers played hoses on him to relieve the intense heat until he was carried unconscious from the blazing hold with all the skin burnt from his legs and back. Unconscious for almost a week, Baxter lingered between life and death for 10 days. Not surprisingly doctors told him he would never play rugby again however Baxter declared he would not only play but also represent Australia. Though due to leave the Navy in August, Baxter was not released from hospital until October and he was still in plaster. An ankle, which could not be set because it had been too badly burnt, had to be rebroken.
“In 1951 Baxter played rugby again. His reappearance with Eastern Suburbs in a early season trial game was said to be a triumph of stoicism and remarkably in June he ran out for Australia against New Zealand. In 1953 he joined the Army and three years later, as a sergeant with the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, spent seven weeks in Korea with one of the last few Australian units in the country. ‘Tarakan Jack’ Baxter played nine Tests for Australia in a three-year international career.”
CHEQUERS NIGHTCLUB
Rugby league journalist Bill Mordey was at legendary Sydney nightclub ‘Chequers’ [which at its peak boasted more than 120 staff and had been headlined by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr and Dusty Springfield] the night before a grand final featuring St George. At around 2am, Mordey spotted a rather merry John Raper across the room who was to run out at a sold-out SCG just 12 or 13 hours later. Mordey told Raper he had put huge bets, around 500 pounds, on the Dragons to win.
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As soon as Mordey woke the next morning, he laid off all his bets with the bookie. After a Raper masterclass, St George won the grand final. In the sheds after the victory lap, an exhausted Raper found Mordey and told him he needed to have a big win because of Mordey’s concession. Mordey couldn’t bring himself to tell Raper he had backed out of the bets. A small entry for a massage and spa business sits on the ground level of Mahoney’s Irish pub on Goulburn Street today. John’s wife, Carol, once told Roy Masters that after finishing a match at the SCG, Raper told his wife to head off and he’d be home soon after. Hours later, after cooking dinner and doing the ironing, Carol turned on the TV to a live performance from Shirley Bassey at Chequers. The camera then panned to the crowd and there her husband was, live and in living colour.
JOHNNY WALKER’S STEAK CAVE
Previously known as ‘Angel Cave’ – Johnny Walker’s bistro became a famous eating and drinking spot for many celebrities and footballers including John Raper. In Roy Masters’ book, Inside League’, Masters chapter on Raper was dubbed, “Johnny Raper: On Tour Every Day’. John Singleton would tell the story how Raper and fellow mate, musician and St George tragic Geoff Harvey, would promote fake arm wrestlers between the pair with punters throwing money on the table – pretending they’d never met.
JOHN SINGLETON & JOHNNY RAPER
The media genius John Singleton tells a story about his one-and-only first grade rugby union match and a run-in with Johnny Raper at the Mandarin Club. Singleton was out before the game and bumped into Raper who talked him into staying and many more drinks. In Alan Clarkson’s book with Raper, Singleton says: “I should have had enough brains to say goodnight, to go home and have a good night’s sleep and be primed for a big match. Instead I fell for it, and stayed at the club with Chook. The next morning I felt like death warmed up. I played accordingly. It was the start and finish of my first grade career.”
MANDARIN CLUB
Owned by the Wong brothers who also owned Chequers across the road. One night, Dragons players Johnny Raper, Billy Smith and Graeme Langlands were out on the drink and spotted ‘Break Even’ Billy Mordey who had ran a negative story about the Dragons days earlier. The trio whipped up a plan as payback. Raper, Smith and Langlands found Mordey’s car and loaded it with several trash cans full of old Chinese food. Mordey reported it in the paper, “I won’t name them, but they play for St George and their numbers are three, seven and eight.”
JOHNNY RAPER’S PONTIAC
Journalist Bill Mordey tells Roy Masters in his book, ‘Inside League’, that Johnny Raper had agreed to let Mordey write his ‘life story’ for The Mirror. The paper agreed and rented a unit in Cammeray for a week so Mordey and Raper could get to work. Mordey says Raper picked him up in a brand-new Pontiac and on the way to Cammeray, stopped at a hotel and bought a dozen bottles of champagne. After the first day, Raper headed back over the bridge in his Pontiac and wrapped it around a pole on Elizabeth Street. Finance had not been approved for the car. “I did a left-hand turn at the traffic lights and cut it too fine. I missed the blind side. It was like running into Kevin Ryan.”
