Where The Sea Eagles Nest
from "The Sun" (Thursday, May 2, 1968); by Keith Willey.
Ken Arthurson
Back in 1953 Ken Arthurson, then playing-coach of Parkes, turned out in a Group Eleven trial match. At the time he was rated second-best halfback in Australia (to Keith Holman).
But Ken, a Manly regular, believed he should be number one. And he had come to the country so he could prove his form against Holman in the early representative games.
Arthurson was in sparkling form. He made a burst from the scrum base, 35 yards out, and weaved his way through the opposition.
PLAYING CAREER ENDS
As he went in for a try, the rival winger fell on him and accidentally put his knee into Ken's head. His skull was fractured.
Former Test skipper Ian Walsh, who was on the field that day, said "He had a hole in his head that you could put a cricket-ball in."
At one stage the doctors gave Ken Arthurson 48 hours to live, and he endured months of operations. At the age of 22, his playing career was over.
Fortunately for Manly, he was not lost to football. He returned to his old club as coach, and later secretary. Today he is one of the best known administrators in Rugby League.
Ken Arthurson was a foundation member of the Manly district football club in 1947. He played first grade for three seasons, 1950-51-52, and coached the side from 1957 to 1961.
The club has reached the semi-finals many times. It made three grand finals - 1951, when Arthurson played, and 1957 and 1959, when he was coach. But the premiership has always eluded them.
TALENT
The team will go well for a while, then the dreaded "Manly Slump" sets in - as happened last year when the Sea Eagles lost six games in a row. Fans have dubbed them the "Swallows," and the "Ruptured Ducks." Yet the club's record over 21 seasons has been pretty fair.
"We need to win a premiership, to start building a real tradition," Ken Arthurson said. "We have a depth of talent now that we never had before, and maybe this would be our season."
Headquarters for football in a district extending from the Spit to Palm Beach is the Manly-Warringah Rugby League Club, a palatial two-storey building in Pittwater Road, Brookvale.
INSIGNIA
In the foyer is a wondrous construction of running water, stone, and glass fish-tanks, surmounted by a stuffed bird of prey - the latter, of course, symbolic of the Sea Eagle emblem.
"But," I said to club secretary-manager Jack Martin, "isn't that thing a sea HAWK?" He admitted it was. The Manly-Warringah insignia is a type of sea eagle, coloured maroon and white, which once ranged the N.S.W. coast as far north as Gosford. The species is almost extinct and the club has been unable to find a dinkum specimen. "This is the nearest we could get," Mr Martin said.
But on the walls of the spacious bars are a series of paintings by Geoff Pike depicting the authentic Manly Sea Eagle "attacking" the emblems of other League teams. The bird is depicted chasing rabbits, eating berries, clobbering a green, bilious looking goanna which, presumably, represents the mighty Dragons.
$1 MILLION
Each week the relevant picture hangs in the foyer.
"We used to put a black wreath around it when we lost," Jack Martin said. "But we nearly wore the wreath out one year."
"The original directors were Messrs Arnold B. Stehr (president), Jack Martin, E. A. (Allan) Langford, Ken Arthurson (senior), Clarrie Bowyer, J. L. (Len) Hogan, Jack Munro, Gordon Willoughby.
Membership has grown from 250 to 13,700 and there is a waiting-list of more than 1,000. The club has premises worth $500,000. The turnover is about $1 million annually.
ADDITIONS
Amenities include lounges, bars, games room, billiard room, dining-rooms, snack bar, sauna, and an auditorium seating 1,000. The directors plan to extend the mixed lounge, enclose the beer garden and, later on, to build a gymnasium and pool on a site across Pittwater road. An unusual feature of the club is a large unlicensed room in the basement where players of all grades - including juniors - can hold meetings, or gather after a match with their families and the opponents of the day.
Unlike the setup in other districts, the Manly-Warringah Rugby League Club is a subsidiary of the football club, which provides five of the seven members on the board. The licensed club leases the premises from the football club. It has 13 minor sporting organisations of its own, but the whole of its outside financial effort goes to Rugby League. "We make a grant to the district club and they spend it as they wish," Jack Martin said.
With more than 100 junior League teams in the area, Manly has plenty of local material. The club has talent scouts constantly on the job. Ken Arthurson, former Manly international Roy Bull, and ex-first grader Jim Peebles work on this aspect, in conjunction with the president, Bill Cameron, and treasurer, Allan Langford. They travel to country areas and interstate to watch promising players. The successes include Mick Veivers, Ken Day, Bob Fulton, Denis Ward, Les Hanigan and Harold Whittaker.
1968 HOPE
Yet the majority of the team are "local boys" - Fred Jones, Billy Bradstreet, Frank Stanton, Alec Tennant, Tony Antunac, Norm Pounder, Bob Batty and John Morgan.
The Sea Eagles have changed their plumage many times. They began in maroon jumpers with a white V, which soon altered to a broken bars design. In the late 1950s the club added a monster eagle in front, with two white stripes down each arm. Then it was plain maroon with a small crest. This season the boys have a fancier, striped guernsey carrying the emblem with two thin, white stripes across chest, back and arms, at 12in intervals.
The club is looking to big things from the team. Following a disastrous season in 1964, the committee launched a four-year program to win the premiership - and 1968 is THE year.
They formed an elite squad of 20 players to train scientifically under the direction of the club medical officer, Dr. B. Corrigan. This involved the forwards in swinging weights and dumb-bells, while the backs took special exercises to increase speed and acceleration.
INCENTIVE
The program worked wonders for some players particularly John "Pogo" Morgan, who rose in one year from reserve grade to a place in the 1965 Australian team touring New Zealand.
Manly have started this season in fine style. Ken Arthurson gives much credit to the coach, George Hunter. Then there is the club's incentive payment system - players must win to earn top money."But ultimately it comes back to the team," Mr Arthurson said. "They are the men who have to do the job."
One big frustration is raising temperatures out Manly way. This is the continuing row with the local Show Society, which uses Brookvale Oval only two days a year.
The Sea Eagles want to spend $200,000 over 10 years on ground improvements. They would remove sheds and old buildings, erect stands and eliminate the trotting track to make a rectangular field with the crowd almost on the sidelines. The Show Society will have none of this, and so far it has received Council backing.
"We need a long lease, and freedom to make improvements," Mr Arthurson said. "On the one hand you have a council always crying poor-mouth about roads and so on. On the other is the football club, ready to spend $200,000 on work of direct benefit to the public. Yet we aren't allowed to go ahead. It's infuriating."
