League stalwart put his body on the line, earning tribute from his cricket star son
They didn’t come much tougher than Ged Stokes, who broke his nose seven times and had a finger amputated to further his rugby league career. Stokes, who has died from brain cancer, aged 64, was one of rugby league’s great characters. A carpenter – who once built his own coaching office at Christchurch’s Rugby League Park – Stokes, in later life, passed his skills on to inmates as construction supervisor at Christchurch Men’s Prison.
He was a proud Kiwi, who revealed to Stuff last year that he had mixed emotions after son Ben played the starring role in England’s dramatic Cricket World Cup final win over the Black Caps.
In the throes of Ged’s illness,
Ben began paying his dad a personal tribute
– a three-fingered salute to mark his father’s loss of a digit to the rugby league cause. In a freakish accident in a 1982 game, his finger got caught in Wellington and Kiwis prop Kevin Tamati’s sock.
‘‘When I looked down my finger was dislocated,’’ Stokes recalled in 2001. ‘‘So I went to the sideline, and they told me it was so badly disjointed I should go to the hospital and have it done properly.
‘‘I thought to myself, ‘I don’t really want to come off for a dislocated finger’, so I put it back in myself – and broke it.
‘‘The following week I was going to Workington [in northern England] so couldn’t get much treatment done. I spent the year playing over there with it strapped up and having pain-killing injections every week. When I came back I had to get my [knee] cartilage trimmed, so I got that done and my finger off at the same time.’’
He admitted that spending a season in England with a finger permanently pointing straight ahead was ‘‘cumbersome’’. Especially when enjoying an after-match pint.
As for his oft-broken nose, he shrugged and said: ‘‘Everybody gets those sorts of things.’’
Gerard Stokes was born to play rugby league. His father, Jim, was aWest Coast and Canterbury representative forward. At Christchurch’s St Bede’s College, he played junior rugby union, but risked his teachers’ wrath by continuing his league career.
‘‘At St Bede’s, [league] was frowned upon. I was in a good under-15 rugby team but my goal was to make the Schoolboy Kiwis. Playing league for Papanui in the mornings and rugby in the afternoons, with all that training, probably helped me make it.’’
He made his premier club debut as a teenager and was a Canterbury representative between 1980 and 1982, his golden season. That year, he represented the South Island and was selected for the Kiwis’ tour of Australia and Papua Guinea under Cec Mountford. He played four games, but found his path to the test team blocked by Tamati and Mark Broadhurst.
The 1982 season also saw the start of
Stokes’ association with Workington Town, in Cumbria. He spent the 1982-83 season there, and was never selected for Canterbury again on his return.
‘‘I got offside with them,’’ he said in 2001. ‘‘They asked me to play in a trial the same day I got off the plane from England. I told them I was jet-lagged and said maybe my playing history should be considered . . . At times you regret things you do in your life, and that is one regret I have. I think I played some pretty good football after that and got ignored.’’
At 32, he began his coaching career as a player-coach with Marist-Western Suburbs. He later won a premiership title as Halswell coach, and stepped up to coach the Canterbury Cardinals in the Lion Red Cup between 1994 and 1996.
He became Canterbury coach in 1997, and coached the New Zealand Nines team in 1998, winning the Oceania Nations Cup. He steered the Canterbury Bulls to the inaugural Bartercard Cup national league title in 2000, earning him the accolade as Canterbury’s best
winter sports coach. In 2001 he became assistant to Kiwis coach Gary Freeman.
He then took up a professional coaching contract with Workington Town. He, wife Deb, and 12-year-old Ben set up home in Cockermouth. After his coaching career ended, the family stayed on in England to support Ben in his burgeoning cricket career.
The family returned to Christchurch in 2013, but continued to travel to watch Ben in full flight at cricketing venues around the world. It was on a trip to South Africa last year that Ged was taken ill, and spent some time in a Johannesburg hospital.
In latter years, he showed as much devotion to his role at Paparua Prison as he had to coaching his rugby league charges. So committed was he that he headed to his day job soon afterwatching Ben blaze England to the Cricket World Cup title after the nervetingling victory over the Black Caps at Lord’s last July.
He admitted to mixed emotions at that result. ‘‘I really am disappointed for the Black Caps; it’s such a shame someone had to walk away without the trophy,’’ he told Stuff.
‘‘Hand on heart, I amoverjoyed for Ben and the team, but I am still aNew Zealand supporter.’’ –
‘‘I thought to myself, ‘I don’t really want to come off for a dislocated finger’, so I put it back in myself – and broke it.’’