Smile and Stick

​THE EPILOGUE TO IAN HEADS’ The Great Grand Final Heist is written by David Trodden, CEO of the NSW Rugby League and a devoted Balmain fan.

​A running theme of the book is what the Tigers' triumph in 1969 meant to the local community; Trodden, who grew up on the streets on Balmain, knows plenty about that ...

MY FATHER BILL is 90 now. He was born in a house in Bradford Street, Balmain, and lived virtually his whole life there, although his age doesn’t allow him to do so now. That was the house where I grew up as well. I went to Balmain Public School, and afterwards to Fort Street High School at Petersham. My whole childhood was Balmain.

The Balmain community back in those days was a real community, a place with a village atmosphere. Everybody’s social communications happened within the boundaries of the community. All your friends were there and everything you did was there. Growing up in that sort of environment, you developed a deep bond with that community.

I turned eight in 1969, the year we won the competition. For my birthday, I’d been given a Balmain jersey with the number one on the back, a tribute to Keith Barnes. The impact of the premiership win was a pivotal moment in forming my attitudes to a lot of things that subsequently happened in my life, based around connections to community. Before long, and in the years that followed, I genuinely believed that if you wanted to make something of your life, coming from Balmain gave you a good head start.

That team of ’69 had a real connection with the local community. They played footy the way it was meant to be played, with a smile on their faces and just having a crack, and their winning of the competition cemented the views I’d started to have, about Balmain being better than anywhere else. To me, it was the centre of the world.

The Tigers were my team, and once you fall in love with a footy team that’s it for life. They become a pillar of your life.
I watched the grand final at home, on television, wearing my jersey and with a footy in my hands. My recollections are still vivid … of the one try … of Balmain tackling Souths right out of it … of not giving them an inch.

The effect of the win was to lift and unite the entire district.

The grand final coincided with the opening week of the local cricket competition, and after fulltime I stood at the top of our street for what seemed hours, waiting for my dad to return home from his game so I could tell him that Balmain had won. He knew that already, of course, but I was determined to break the news.

Looking back at that bunch of young guys of ’69, they represented the reality of a changing era. They were there because the club had lost the likes of Keith Barnes, Laurie Moraschi, Dennis Tutty, Peter Jones, Laurie Fagan, Bob Boland, Bob Mara and Ron Clothier in the years before. This was a ‘regeneration team’, and susceptible to the coaching of Leo Nosworthy. The thought occurs: Would the older players have been as malleable? Of Nosa, I think of a man of quiet and steely determination. He was the leader, the dominant personality. Even Dave Bolton and Peter Provan, who were in the same age demographic, would defer to him. I think of Nosa, too, as ‘total Balmain’, so strongly linked to the district through family ties and his working life on the wharves.

I grew up in Balmain aware of a moral code that was reinforced everywhere you went. It modelled my life and I’m sure modelled the lives of the team of 1969, too. It was about sticking together, in line with the old Tigers motto: ‘Smile and Stick’. Now, the demographic has changed; go to pubs in Balmain these days and the Super Rugby is on the TV. But when the Tigers play at Leichhardt, the crowds still turn up on the hill, representing a concession to history: to get down there and support the local team.

Dad and I got real joy from the premiership wins of Balmain in 1969 and Wests Tigers in 2005. Both victories were against the odds, unexpected, and against a background of the absence of any sort of sustained success. Such achievements reinvigorate you whenever they happen. They renew your hope. And it’s not just to do with sport … it’s in relation to everything in your life.​

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