THE 'BIG O': Hugh McGahan remembers a legend
PLUS: The Week That Was and the Weekend That Will Be
In mid-80s New Plymouth, there was only one place to watch Australian league live.
The Plymouth Hotel, trapped between two one-way streets at the eastern end of the CBD, had a satellite dish and somehow a couple of the city’s (I use the word “city” liberally to describe NP circa 1985) biggest league fans convinced the manager to use the dish to screen the Winfield Cup playoffs.
The picture quality was shocking, a fuzzy, staticky projection of what was supposed to be the world’s best club league competition1. Only four teams ever seemed to be involved - the Parramatta Eels, Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, the despised Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles and the St George Dragons - but despite the wretched picture I’d sit in the corner with my handle of syrupy cola and watch the “low-scoring classics” that dominated the era.
We were there because according to dad it was where you saw the best players - Ray Price, the Mortimer and Hughes brothers, Mick Cronin, Graham Eadie, Max Krilich, Greg Brentnall, Peter Sterling, Peter Tunks, Michael O’Connor, Steve Ella et cetera - but to my eyes, the best of the best called Carlaw Park home.
When I heard Olsen Filipaina had died yesterday I did a thought exercise and tried to remember the Kiwis team that lost the series 1-2 to the mighty Kangaroos in 1985, despite outplaying them for long stretches in every test.
It’s a measure of how wedged they remain in my mind that I missed just one second-rower (and that was only because I thought I was missing a centre and twisted myself in knots trying to think of backs), and had one player out of position.
I wrote down Kemble, Bell, Leuluai, ?, O’Hara, Filipaina, Friend, Wright, Tamati H, Tamati K, Graham, McGahan, Prohm.
I kicked myself when I checked it on Wikipedia and saw that the versatile Gary Prohm had played centre, not lock, and I’d somehow forgotten the great second-rower Kurt Sorensen.
A young Hugh McGahan played lock.
Last night he took a call from Dean Bell and they talked about “Ollie”; they remembered that in a serious business, Filipaina always played with a smile on his face.
“He was always a pleasure to play with,” McGahan recalls. “When I was starting out, he basically ran the Auckland comp in the late-70s. We looked up to him with big eyes and listened to everything he had to say, although he never thought of himself as a leader; he was always more comfortable being one of the boys.”
Filipaina was a Mangere-East Hawk, a team famous for Sir Peter Leitch’s patronage, and McGahan says Filipaina and the Mad Butcher remained close even after he departed to play in Australia.
Filipaina’s career in Sydney - Balmain, Easts and North Sydney - never lived up to the heights his talent should have dictated.
“The Australian coaches just didn’t know how to talk to him,” McGahan laments, saying Filipaina was never given the licence to express his prodigious talents.
“He, along with the Aboriginal and Lebanese players, copped a lot of abuse from the crowds, which was hard to take.
“He played with a smile on his face, was happy-go-lucky, and Lowie [Kiwis coach Graham Lowe] understood him and always managed to get the best out of him.”
That Kiwis team remains this writer’s favourite league side and it’s not even close. There might have been more decorated players and teams since, but none get close in terms of evoking a passion for international league.
Mark Graham was the best player and the brains of the operation, but The Big O was the beating heart of that team.
His kauri-trunks thighs were a weapon but there was so much more to his game than bumping Wally Lewis off.
“He had such silky skills,” McGahan says. “He was great at that little chip over the top or the grubber into space, which was more prevalent in the game back then.
“He had quick hands. He could catch a ball and instantly flick out a 10m pass that would hit the runner. We’d watch it all the time in training. His timing was perfect.”
Filipaina’s brilliant eye-hand coordination manifested itself in a mean tennis game. When he was with McGahan at Easts, his tennis matches with Arthur Beetson were the stuff of legend.
“We’d always be knocked out and it would be those two in the final - these big men moving each other relentlessly around the court. It was great to watch.”
With full-time training and more empathetic coaching, Filipaina could have been remembered as one of the bona fide greats of the game, but having read excerpts from his biography, he needed other things in his life beyond league.
His teams never featured in those grainy games at the Plymouth Hotel, which is more the pity.
He’ll always be a legend on these pages, though.
Olsen Filipaina 1957-2022
THE WEEK THAT WAS
At the Turin Winter Olympics 16 years ago, American snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis wrote herself into sporting infamy when she showboated and fell while furlongs in front on the home straight.
In the intervening years she’s tried to redeem that mistake with no luck. Despite being the dominant Snowboard Cross rider of her generation, her Olympic career seemed cursed. Twice she crashed in the semis; last time out she fined .03s out of bronze.
So you would have had to have had a heart of stone not to be moved by the 36 year old’s moment of triumph in Beijing.
In entirely predictable news, Australia’s T20 tour to New Zealand has been called off. The reason given was the unavailability of MIQ beds but as discussed with tongue firmly in cheek on The BYC, it’s more likely they discovered they had to play all three games on McLean Park, one of the last of the dual-code stains, sorry stadia, on the cricket circuit.
West Ham defender Kurt Zouma assaulted a kitten - you read that right - while his brother filmed it (I’m not going to post the video as it makes me sick, but you can easily Google it if you need the evidence). West Ham manager David Moyes picked Zouma for the next game, saying it was his responsibility to put the best possible team on the park. I’ve always admired Moyes, he seems like a decent man who had the impossible task of following Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United and has somehow retained his dignity after that chastening experience.
His justification for selecting Zouma is rotten to the core, however. As a leader in a large organisation, he has responsibilities that extend far beyond putting the best team out on the pitch; responsibilities such as ensuring his team represents their community, sponsors and owners in the best possible light. Moyes failed big time.
Senegal won the African Cup of Nations this week but this piece on BBC Sport rewound the clock 26 years to a momentous occasion that gets a little lost in South Africa’s sporting history, coming as it did a year after the Rugby World Cup.
The day before their opening match President Mandela, whose clan name was Madiba, made the first of several visits to the team.
Lucas Radebe, then of Leeds United, was another in the South Africa squad. For him, meeting Mandela was almost like a religious experience.
"When we were growing up, we never knew what his face looked like," he says.
"We had an old picture of him when he was young, but when he came to see us in camp, that's when there was 'Madiba Magic'. He had such a great aura. We didn't know what to say.
"That day, if we'd come across Brazil, we would have beaten them. That's how much we were inspired. His presence catapulted us to the highest level, where every game we played, we were playing for Madiba and South Africa."
THE WEEKEND THAT WILL BE
There is nothing quite as OTT American as the Super Bowl so I’m counting Monday as the weekend. The LA Rams have become something of a minor powerhouse since Sean McVay took the reins in 2017, but they’re missing a title having been beaten by the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LIII. This season they went for it by trading for Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford and adding high-priced stars Odell Beckham Jr and Von Miller during the season.
It’s no great surprise to see the Rams at the Big Dance - played in their home SoFi Stadium - but the same can’t be said of their opponents, the once-hapless Cincinnati Bengals who had not won a playoff game since 1990 prior to this season. They improved through the draft, picking up brilliant quarterback Joe Burrow two years ago and this year adding his favourite receiver at college, Ja’Marr Chase.
Here’s everything you need to know before the match, from ESPN’s Bill Barnwell.
Or this, from NBC’s Peter King.
Oh, and Tupac is being raised from the dead to play the halftime show. That should be interesting.
LA Rams v Cincinnati Bengals, Los Angeles, Monday 12.30pm, Spark Sport and ESPN
The Winter Olympics trucks clumsily along and, predictably, there’s a Russian doping story to keep the fires lit. There’s no shock in a story about Russians cheating, but this is slightly more nuanced (but just as troubling) as it involves a 15-year-old girl who still cuddles teddy bears, figure skating sensation Kamila Valieva.
She has reportedly tested positive for trimetazidine, a banned heart medication. The World Anti-Doping Agency prohibits the drug because it can aid in endurance and increase blood flow.
As Yahoo!Sports columnist Dan Wetzel noted:
In an Olympics that were already overrun with headlines about genocide and slavery, politics and propaganda… it would be par for the course for Russia to drug a child athlete only to have her stay eligible because, as a child athlete, she is too young and naive to know she was drugged.
Is that the Olympics that the Olympics want? Because that’s the one it currently is getting, a Winter Games of IOC president Thomas Bach serving as a pawn from the Chinese Communist Party while everything around him rots.
Say what you really feel, Dan.
On to more positive news, there’s New Zealanders in action this weekend. All channels below are on Sky.
Alice Robinson, Super G skiing, today 3.50pm, Beijing 2; Peter Michael, men’s 10,000m speed skating, tonight 8.55pm, Beijing 1; Campbell Wright, 10km biathlon, tomorrow 9.50pm, Beijing 1; Margaux Hackett, freestyle skiing (slopestyle), Sunday 2.55pm, Beijing 1
The UFC money-making machine rolls out for the 271st time and headlining is Israel Adesanya who fights former champion Robert Whittaker. Adesanya won easily when the pair last met in Melbourne. I know some people who care about the UFC.
Adesanya v Whittaker, Houston, Sunday from 4pm, Spark Sport and Sky Arena ($39.99)
The White Ferns’ World Cup prep starts in earnest with the first ODI against a strong Indian side. What coach Bob Carter would dearly love to see is some match-turning contributions from every member of the team across the five-match series.
NZ v India, Queenstown, tomorrow 11am, Spark Sport
After a winter break, the Premier League returned with a bunch of midweek fixtures, highlighted by Southampton beating Tottenham Hotspur 3-2 away. While the title looks to be a one-horse race as Manchester City remain a winning machine, the rapid improvements of Newcastle and Norwich threatens to widen the relegation battle. The weekend’s tastiest fixture could be between two teams in danger of being sucked into a survival race.
Everton v Leeds United, Goodison Park, Sunday 4am, Spark Sport
Someone might be able to correct me on this but I’m pretty sure the only live overseas club league we got in New Zealand in those days was the Challenge Cup final. It was also around this time you used to be able to go to video shops and get VHS tapes Winfield Cup matches and highlights a week or two late.
Had the privilege and honor meeting the 'Big O' in the company of Kevin Tamati and these guys just oozed a passion for the game and the people that played it from the grassroots up.
Great tribute Dylan.
Excellent tribute to Olsen a truly great Kiwi in a very good Era for NZ rugby league I have fond memories of sitting at Carlaw Park watching Olsen literally running over a Great Britain side in the company of two young boys who turned out to be pretty handy at their chosen sports. I am very impressed with you getting that 85 side correct well done.