Changa’s northern tenure all too brief
RUGBY league Immortal Graeme Langlands could easily have forged a special place in Gold Coast sporting history.
The legendary St George fullback, who died yesterday in a Sydney nursing home aged 76, was once earmarked to coach a Gold Coast team in the old Brisbane Rugby League competition.
It was in 1983 that Langlands was lured to the Coast by then local powerbrokers, the late Don Alroe and Ron Workman, with a view to prepare the Gold Coast Vikings for a place in the BRL in 1984.
Everything was in place for the move – with a rectangular ground constructed and goalposts erected at what is now Wally Fankhauser Reserve in Musgrave Hill and what is now headquarters for one of Queensland’s biggest social clubs the Southport Sharks.
But the BRL bid was abandoned almost as soon as it began when it was realised just how much funding was going to be needed to run it.
“The issue was that the cost to field a team in Brisbane was too high,” then GCRL chief executive Ron Workman said. “It was a crying shame.” With the BRL the ultimate goal for the Coast under Langlands, instead he coached the Southport Tigers in 1983. The Tigers made the grand final where they lost to Beaudesert.
Former Canterbury, North Sydney and Wynnum Manly player Peter Inskip was president of the Tigers at the time.
“Changa lived for a while at the Hotel Cecil when Peter Gallagher ran it and they set him up in a fruit juice kiosk at Australia Fair Shopping Centre,” Inskip said.
“I think that was so degrading for the poor fellow.
“Yet everyone was pretty ecstatic about having an Australian player coaching the Tigers.”
Langlands was on the Coast for just one year before heading back south.