By MALCOLM ANDREWS
A WORD of warning … this column was written a day or so before the result of the NRL Grand Final.
This was well before my mates settled in and poured their first glass of the singing syrup … hooligan soup … amber fluid … call it what you will.
Mine had to wait until late Sunday night, although I did plan to sneak a half-pint while relaxing for a few moments at half-time, knowing that Skype couldn’t reach me at the Olympic stadium and the good folk at Brighouse Towers couldn’t see me.
After all, with three matches and all the hoopla such as the drive-by of retiring legends, Grand Final day always turns out to be a long, long, long affair.
This was especially true given that the Sharks were a chance of winning their first Premiership, in their 50th year of existence.
As those of us at Chez Andrews don’t know the result it is a perfect time to talk about one of the most interesting build-ups in many decades.
And time to shed some light on a piece of Australian history. A lesson for the younger generation!
The whole week has been about Sharks fans turning on their porch lights.
I mentioned it briefly a coupled weeks ago, referring to a famous quip by super coach Jack Gibson during his days as a commentator on the Nine Television Network: “Waiting for Cronulla to win a Premiership is like leaving the porch tight on for Harold Holt.”
We had to explain to British readers how Holt was an Australian Prime Minister who disappeared while swimming off a Victorian beach in 1967 and whose body was never found.
There was a conspiracy theory. Some people suggested he had been kidnapped by China’s security officers and spirited away in a submarine that had been lurking off the Victorian coast.
For the record, 1967 was also the year Cronulla joined the big league.
Now it seems that you did not have to be British to be bamboozled by Gibbo’s quote.(continued below)
Many younger Aussie fans had no idea. They didn’t know who was Harold Holt and some of them had not even heard of Jack Gibson.
I should point out I was working in Fleet Street of the Daily Express at the time of Holt’s disappearance.
The tabloids found it was the perfect excuse to print a front-page photo of the silver-haired Holt surrounded by young female members of the Holt family, resplendent in the briefest of bikinis.
In this year’s play-offs, as Cronulla surged through to the Grand Final, huge poster of the former Prime Minister in a wet-suit have been waved at television cameras.
Some fans have actually turned up dressed in wet-suits and in the preliminary final one fellow even wore a porch light on his head.
Last week a clever Aussie reporter searched out Holt’s grandson to talk about the Gibson quote.
When the intrepid scribe tracked down the 44-year-old Robert Holt, now Sydney-based, he found Holt Junior had never heard the quote because he grew up in Melbourne.
Then last week someone left a message on his telephone answering machine drawing attention to it.
“I am embarrassed to say I had to ask a guy who sits next to me what it was all about,” Robert Holt said.
“He explained the story to me, which was actually the first time I had heard of it.”
Robert Holt had at last found a Sydney team for which to cheer.
