It’s a beautiful, joyous photo. A father and his little daughter. A treasure of a moment carried around safely in my archive storage for forty years. I want to pass it on to the girl in the picture, Lauren Dowling.
Her Dad was Garry Dowling, the former Australian Rugby League Test fullback who was tragically killed in a car accident this week (March 5) in 1983, six months after this photo was snapped by a photographer at the Gold Coast Bulletin.
I was the last person to see Garry alive. He sipped a can of coke as we chatted next to his car after a game that fateful Saturday at the Beaudesert Kingfishers ground. Garry was relaxed, full of trademark vitality, fit as a fiddle, flashing his generous smile in small talk which included quiet optimism about the season ahead with his Burleigh Bears club and Gold Coast Vikings representative teams.
Garry was keen to get back to Surfers Paradise, so I waved him goodbye and soon after followed him down the road. I knew it well and, as always, vividly remember the viciously sharp bend into and over a notorious bridge.
Next morning I took a call from former international and Souths legend John Sattler, then a hotelier at Southport and team manager of the Vikings. A hard man on the field but with the gentlest of hearts off it, ‘Satts ‘was devastated. He told me Garry had been found in his wrecked car down the embankment of the bridge. We’d all passed over it – including the Vikings team bus - unknowingly - on the way home the previous evening.
I intended writing this tribute last year on the 40th anniversary of Garry’s death but I held off because I was trying to locate his daughter Lauren to first pass on the beautiful photograph. Despite contacting the Canterbury Bulldogs where he played most of his first-grade grades (113) and a grand final (1974), I haven’t found Lauren. Hopefully this will spark a memory and contact so I can give her the original 10 x 8 print I had made up by the Bulletin way back then after the 1982 Gold Coast grand final, won by his Burleigh Bears.
Before we go into the marvellous footballer he was – Garry played for Australia in one of the most incredible eras of fullbacks in the game’s history – I did find today a very poignant post by Lauren on a RL player statistics website.
“Garry was my father and he died when I was 5 years old. I never got to know him, I never got to see him play. I can only go by comments that those who knew him have made over the years, and most say that he was a great guy with a big heart and some great football skills. Wish I could have met him, always in my heart xxxx”
Lauren, take it from someone who played with Garry at Canterbury way back in the early 1970s then was his coach at the Gold Coast Vikings in the 1980s, Peter Inskip: your Dad absolutely was all those things you’ve heard.
“Garry was a wonderful fella, a very likeable bloke with no airs and graces,” Peter told me today from his home near Coffs Harbour. “He was from the country (Oakdale) and was a typical country boy. He was humble and never talked up his undoubted ability.”
Peter and Garry had crossed over at the Bulldogs before Inskip moved to North Sydney Bears then Wynnum Manly in Brisbane and the Gold Coast (then Southport) Tigers.
The photo of them (below) was taken when the Gold Coast Vikings entered the inaugural Winfield State League in 1982 featuring the eight Brisbane clubs and six Qld country regional sides.
Garry had come to the Gold Coast as a 29-year-old to try to resurrect his representative career through the Queensland state side. Only two years earlier he’d been named player of the 1980 Test series when touring New Zealand with the Australian team.
He’d actually been selected as fullback in the first NSW State of Origin side in 1980 but was injured playing for Parramatta a few days before and his place taken by Graham Eadie.
Eadie. Russell Fairfax. Greg Brentnall. Even the great Graeme Langlands. These were the fullbacks Garry opposed in his quest for Country, NSW and Test selection over the years.
Yet G. Dowling was Number 1 on the team sheet for three interstate matches and five tour games for Australia as well as playing in 10 finals matches, a grand final and first grade games for Canterbury (113), Parramatta (37) and Wests (19). He was a gifted and powerful runner, scoring 112 tries In the Sydney premiership games.
At the height of Garry’s rep tussles with the mercurial Fairfax, we have journalist and league historian Steve Ricketts to thank for this anecdote about the views of the Immortal Clive Churchill. Churchill said that although he thought Fairfax was probably the better fullback, he should be selected at five-eighth so Dowling could play fullback. Garry was just that good he shouldn’t be left out.
The Australian selectors picked Garry ahead of all comers for that 1980 tour of New Zealand. It was reported that he played “a blinder” in his Test debut, a 27-6 defeat of the Kiwis at Carlaw Park.
There were those in the NSW rugby league fraternity at the time who may have dismissed Garry as “over the hill” when he moved to the Gold Coast in 1982 but don’t forget he’d represented NSW only six months earlier and was the official Player-of-the-Match as NSW downed Qld 22-9 in Sydney.
It was an exciting time for Gold Coast rugby league when the Vikings entered the State League under respected coach Peter Inskip with Garry Dowling as fullback - pictured together above - and a raft of talented players like Pat Shepherdson, Brad Garrett, Steve Kavanagh and Jim Heery, all of whom would be selected for Queensland Country. Another, Mark Pocock, went on to play for Norths Devils and the Manly Sea Eagles. The Vikings were the best-performed country side, knocking over star-laden Brisbane teams Souths (22-8), Wests (9-7) and Brothers (20-14) and drawing with Norths (20-20).
So there was some expectation from those of us in the stands at Lang Park of an upset when Qld Country, captained by Garry, took on St George – skippered by Craig Young and coached by Roy Masters - in the KB Cup at Lang Park. The Country side included the likes of Rohan Hancock and Martin Bella.
Queensland Country: Garry Dowling, Warren Green, Paul Finlay, Col Gilmour, Mark Connell, Bradley Garrett, Robert Walmsley, Steve McDonald, Kel Kerr Greg Quinn, Jim Heery, Eddie Muller Rohan Hancock. Res: Steve Kavanagh, Tim Dwyer, Pat Shepherdson, Martin Bella.
It was not to be. Inexplicably, colourful Country coach Henry Holloway hooked Garry from the field in the first half and the Saints went on to a 26-10 victory. I never got to the bottom of it – something about tactics I gather – but Holloway’s action ended Garry’s further representative dreams.
Returning to that day at Beaudesert. It was a Vikings trial. A pre-season hit out against the Beaudesert Kingfishers. The Vikings lost.
Peter Inskip remembers chatting with Garry in the clubhouse afterwards.
“Garry was very supportive of his teammates,” he said. “ It was just a trial and he wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to do a bunch of sackings because we lost, which I wasn’t. I said “seeya at training next week” and that was the last time I saw him.”
“Skippy” as he’s forever been known, said Garry was a natural team player and leader, trained and led the team by example and was immensely liked and respected by his teammates who followed his lead.
He reminded me that Garry had only driven up from the coast to Beaudesert because he’d missed the team bus departure.
I got to know Garry when he first arrived on the Gold Coast, which was natural given I was a (young) sportswriter at the Bulletin and contributor to Rugby League Week at the time. Well before my broadcast days. I'd played with the Burleigh Bears 1979 team which, like Garry’s 1982 team, won the premiership title. Who knows, if injury hadn’t ended my career early, we may have played together the Bears. We became friends. I found him just a good, decent person and totally understated, softly spoken and humble. Not that he didn’t have fierce ambition and confidence in his ability. Just that he didn’t yell it from the rooftops.
He shared with me something few knew: that he’d a foot deformity at birth, had an operation and for some time was fitted with a steel brace for a while. He laughed that he was flat-footed. I’d never noticed. His great love was his little girl Lauren.
The photo with Lauren was taken after the Bears beat Tugun 30-2 in the grand final and, as it turned out, was his last for Burleigh. So it’s worth listing his teammates that day: Darryl Joyce, Jim Crane, Chris Thorley, Tony Bayley, Laurie Oar, Garry Thomas, Terry Teloa, Michael Toomey, Wayne Homer, Merv Davis and Archie Moore.
If anyone knows the girl in the picture – little Lauren Dowling – please do pass this on.
g'day mate , not sure if you found Lauren ,.. but i was Garry's partner in a business , and have caught up with Lauren and Lee , his wife then ,.. in Melbourne !!?? get in touch if you are still serching ?? kind regards , Alan Holmes ..., Walcha NSW :)