Coll ‘made for the modern game’
Rugby league mates reckon former Kiwis captain Tony Coll would have been a NRL star in the modern age and point to his famous runaway try against Wales as proof.
‘Butch’ Coll, who died suddenly on Thursday while mountain biking with Tony Kokshoorn, the former mayor of Greymouth, set the rugby league world alight in a world championship match in Swansea in 1975.
The Swansea showdown will be forever remembered for a moment of magic from Coll, who’d made his test debut in 1972 after a team-mate pulled a calf muscle in the haka.
The athletic second row forward with the speed of an outside back, collected a pass from a play-the-ball, broke a tackle and scampered over the half-the-field with John Bevan, a former British and Irish Lions rugby union wing, and Bill Francis, a Great Britain rugby league international, vainly giving chase.
Anthony Peter Coll’s passing has shocked the rugby league world, who’d watched him bounce back to his old self after a cardiac arrest in February 2019, when some timely CPR from lifelong mate Kokshoorn saved his life.
As fate would have it, Coll was surrounded by his buddies till the last. He and Kokshoorn were riding a trail near Greymouth’s Karoro Beach, near where four other friends from a weekly ‘‘coffee crew’’ that met for over 30 years were walking.
They all rushed to help Kokshoorn tend to their fallen friend. One of the walkers, West Coast Rugby League development officer Paddy Byrne, said they all ‘‘did our best’’, but to no avail. His only consolation was ‘‘Butch would have gone out how he liked. He was never one who was going to spend a lot of time on the couch.’’
In the eyes of former New Zealand Rugby League president Ray Haffenden, Coll was the Kiwis’ best player in the 1970s and ‘‘the type of player a NRL team like the Warriors would love to have today’’.
Ray Baxendale packed down with Coll in the West Coast, South Island and the Kiwis’ second row. He believes his friend would be a NRL star these days.
‘‘He was made for the modern game. He could go for 80 minutes . . . he could run like a back and he was as strong a tackler as any forward; he just had an incredible motor and tremendous footballing ability.’’
Baxendale said Coll never lifted weights but had the ‘‘barrel chest’’ of a natural athlete.
‘‘I think it came from when he was a kid and his dad would take his boys hunting down in south Westland and the Paparoas. That’s how he had the edge.’’
Coll captained his high school first XV rugby team, but followed his father
Peter – who played in the West Coast’s historic 1946 win over England – into rugby league.
He joined the strong Greymouth Marist club, which provided the only three West Coasters to win the NZRL
Player of the Year award – Graham Kennedy, John Hibbs and Coll.
Hibbs, Haffenden, Byrne and Baxendale all described Coll as the ultimate competitor, whose ‘‘will to win’’ was legendary. Coll survived a torrid debut for the West Coast when his two front teeth were ‘‘knocked out’’ by a Canterbury rival who mistook him for someone else.
His first test for the Kiwis, during the
1972 World Cup at Marseilles against France was equally eventful. ‘‘We were doing the haka and [prop] Mita Mohi pulled a calf muscle,’’ Coll recalled in
2014.
Coll went on to become the most capped Kiwis forward of the 1970s, playing 24 tests and missing just one.
He would have chalked up many more than 30 caps, but the Kiwis did not play internationals in two of his prime years, 1973 and 1976.
Baxendale said, as a captain, Coll was ‘‘such a worker he just led by example [as a captain]’’.
‘‘He was a man of few words on the field, but he was always in the leadership group and had a big say in how things were done.’’
Coll captained the West Coast and South Island teams and led a New Zealand XIII to a win in 1976 over a Sydney Metropolitan side. In 1977, in the prime of his career, Coll was named as captain of the Kiwis for the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
The Kiwis won just one game – against France – leading some critics, including influential Auckland administrator George Rainey, to lobby for an Aucklander to become captain.
‘‘I just felt I wanted, if I was selected, to be a member of the squad . . . so I asked the selectors to consider me was a player, not as a captain, and my form went up again,’’ Coll said.
Coll played 15 games on a tour of Australia in 1978, with the New Zealand Rugby League Annual noting that Australian critics regarded the tough West Coaster and burly standoff Olsen Filipaina as the only Kiwis likely to make a Sydney first-grade side.
Coll enjoyed one of his best tours to England and France in
1980, playing under the coaching of another West Coast legend, Ces Mountford. He said he enjoyed playing with people he regarded as Kiwis greats, including player of the century Mark Graham and Fred Ah Kuoi.
In 1980, he also captained the South Island to a 12-11 win over Australia in Christchurch.
That must have been some consolation for the major disappointment of Coll’s test career – never beating Australia. He bowed out in
1982 – a year before the Kiwis broke a
12-year duck against the Kangaroos. Coll donned the black and white jersey 65 times, including 30 tests. He scored 18 tries and slotted a goal from his only attempt, in his final test against Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby.