Farewell to Nick, the prop who changed face of rugby
THE Grim Reaper took his usual toll during the year, a list of the noble and the notorious headed by a larger-than-life character who changed the course of the game.
Sixty years after his birth, shortly after his parents migrated from Lebanon to Sydney, Sir Nicholas (‘Call me Nick’) Shehadie moved decisively to pre-empt the hijacking of international rugby by independent promoters. As president of the Australian Rugby Union, he knew far more than his counterparts in Britain and Ireland most of whom were blissful in their ignorance.
Along with a member of the NZRFU, Dick Littlejohn, Shehadie held a series of meetings with the home countries, each hastily arranged in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Dublin. He left them with a choice: “Either we run our own World Cup or some outsider will beat us to it and take all the players.”
In the mid-Eighties, amateurism was on the way out, not that any of the diehards on the Irish and Scottish Rugby Unions saw the signs. The Scots were particularly indignant, especially their then honorary treasurer, Gordon Masson.
The way he and many likeminded administrators saw it, a World Cup would herald professionalism which, of course, it did. Having listened to the ‘Nick and Dick’ pitch, Masson is understood to have said: “Over my dead body”.
Shehadie’s parting shot left Masson in no doubt as to what the Aussie thought of him: “When the World Cup is held, don’t bother to come.’’
The first one went ahead the following year, 1987, thanks to England and Wales countering the Scottish-Irish attempt to veto the proposal. And ever since, the signatures of all those European players as gathered by would-be entrepreneur David Lord are still lying in a Sydney bank vault.
A sequel to the Masson episode took place in the committee box at Twickenham just before the England-Australia final in 1991. Shehadie spotted his bête-noire and tried to grab his hand in an attempt to feel his pulse.
“When he saw me,’’ said Shehadie. “I confronted him to see if he was still alive….’’
Few sportsmen are held in public esteem high enough to be granted a State funeral. On the day the former Wallaby prop died, last February at 92, flags across Australia flew at half-mast in tribute to a great rugby man who was also a former Lord Mayor of Sydney.
No flags were lowered over the death of another prop in a more remote corner of Australia. The reclusive Keith Murdoch passed away at 74, almost half a century after he had been sent home from the All Blacks’ European tour of 1972-3 for assaulting a security guard in Cardiff.
Gus Black, the oldest surviving Lion when he died at 92, made his debut at scrum-half for Scotland in the first capped match after the Second World War, in Paris.
The year also marked the loss of several other notable internationals, among them Harlequins, England and Lions centre Phil Davies (80); Bridgend and Wales back row forward Gareth ‘Sam’ Williams (63); John Mantle (76) of Newport and St Helens and the Sixties All Black wing Tony Steel (76).