by Andy Carr

Take a look at any team photograph of Newtown, New South Wales or Australia in the early 1910s. Paddy McCue jumps right out at you. Glaring insolently at the camera, this man - obviously a front row forward - seems older and meaner than his team mates.

Pictures of Paddy have so captivated me recently that I have begun to dream about him. My dreams feature Paddy playing in the 1998 Newtown squad, combining with Big Pete Baumgart to give the opposition merry hell. And we're not talking Metro Cup opposition here, folks, more like Newtown hammering Brisbane, Manly, Newcastle ...

This article discusses my efforts to learn more about Paddy McCue. It outlines the sources I checked, and provides tips for other obsessives who wish to discover more about particular players from seasons long gone. But first, a warning. In order to find out more about rugby league history, you may have to visit a library!

This doesn't have to be a traumatic experience, but be prepared to spend a good deal of time poring through old newspapers and magazines. For Sydneysiders, the place to be is the State Library of New South Wales. Before you visit, telephone the library (02 9273 1414) to enquire about opening hours and how to apply for a reader's ticket to use the Mitchell Library, that remarkable collection of Australiana.

I'm sure people who live outside New South Wales will be able to find similar institutions closer to home.

I first consulted some reference books to get the basic facts. Glen Hudson and Alan Whiticker's Encyclopedia of rugby league players (Gary Allen, Smithfield, 1995) provides an excellent lead. This book tells us that Paddy played 86 matches for Newtown RLFC from 1910 to 1916, and that Newtown was his only club. It mentions Paddy's representative career, including four tests each for the rugby union Wallabies and the rugby league Kangaroos. Then it details Paddy's coaching career and his death in 1962.

A fine forward is Paddy McCue, In the scrummage he bores his way through; He'll streak for the line, In a manner sublime, And he's not above mixing it, too. Poem submitted by a reader of The Whistle, published on its Competition Page, 25 June 1910.

This information led me to other sources. Terry Williams' Out of the Blue (Newtown RLFC, Tempe, 1993), that well-researched history of Newtown RLFC, discusses Paddy McCue's career in the wider context of Bluebag history.

As for Paddy's involvement in the other code, Jack Pollard's Australian rugby: The game and the players (Pan Macmillan, Chippendale, 1994) is the real deal.

I'm not sure how he did it, but Pollard unearthed McCue's rugby union nickname, 'Big Dog', and drew a vivid picture of Paddy's playing style: He was a powerful scrummager, clever dribbler and excelled in lineouts. He handled wet and muddy fields better than any of his contemporaries, with safe hands and good footwork.

Pollard went on to mention Paddy McCue's pivotal role in the second mass defection of Sydney rugby union players to the new code, which took place at the close of season 1909. Depending on where you stand, Paddy was an absolute hero or an abject villain.

Hudson and Whiticker also mentioned Paddy's Olympic medal in rugby union. To find out more about this, I consulted Malcolm Andrews' Australians at the Olympics (ABC Books, Sydney, 1996). What a story!

The 1908 Wallabies, while on their tour of the UK, decided to have a crack at the gold medal for rugby union at the London Olympic Games (rugby union was an Olympic sport until 1924). Unfortunately, there was only one opposition team. Labelled 'Great Britain', the team was actually a county team from Cornwall.

County champions maybe, but no match for a full-strength Australian squad which included the talent of McCue, McKivat and 'Boxer' Russell. No surprise the Wallabies won 32-3, probably the easiest Olympic gold medal ever won by an Australian team.

The scrapbooks of John Corbett Davis (Davis Sporting Collection no. 2, Mitchell Library) are a goldmine for research into sports in the first four decades of the 20th century.

Mr Davis kept clippings and photos from various sources, including the two sports newspapers which he edited (The Arrow and The Referee). I wonder whether researchers in a century's time will find my footy scrapbooks this useful. The Davis scrapbooks are heavy going: fragile pages absolutely crammed with news cuttings and notes.

Not everything follows a chronological sequence, so expect to find 1935 articles alongside 1916 material. Sometimes the Davis league scrapbooks contain articles on unrelated sports. Accordingly, there are probably some rugby league gems hidden in the Davis horse-racing and cricket scrapbooks!

An unsourced 1923 newspaper article on Paddy McCue (David Collection no. 2, Files on Rugby Union) provided some unprecedented leads...

I'd already read about Paddy's representative career and his success with the Bluebags in 1910, but I was still in search of more flesh for Paddy's skeleton. This article gave me Paddy's birthday (24 June) and the news that he was the present coach of the Newtown RLFC and the St Ignatius (Riverview) XV.

Fifteen? That means Paddy was coaching rugby union and rugby league concurrently!

A perusal of the St Ignatius yearbooks in the Mitchell Library showed Paddy to be a patient, well respected and much appreciated coach, despite less than successful results on the paddock.

My mania for all things McCue saw me pick up any book on sport, and turn to 'M' in its index, in search of Paddy. Occasionally this unorthodox research style paid off.

For example, in A sense of union, Tom Hickie's brilliant history of Sydney University rugby union (Playright Publishing, Caringbah, 1998), Paddy is mentioned with alarming regularity. Why? Only because he coached the first grade squad in 1926, 1927, 1932, 1935 and from 1942 to 1944! No other publications had mentioned this aspect of Paddy's career.

Dr Hickie's book features excellent team photographs which show Paddy as coach in 1943 and 1944. While Paddy can be identified easily in these photographs, his relationship with the camera was now a more casual one.

Hickie's sources reveal some fascinating insights into Paddy's coaching style. Allegedly, Paddy would tell his boys 'We'll give 'em hell in the first ten minutes, and we'll kill 'em afterwards' (p. 125).

I also looked for Paddy in the State Library's Family History Service and found him in the New South Wales Pioneers Index, the Registrar-General's index to births, deaths and marriages in New South Wales.

This index tells us Paddy's birth was registered in Petersham in 1883, to parents James and Annie. Paddy was also spotted in the New South Wales Probate Index, the Supreme Court's resource for locating wills. According to this index, one Patrick Aloysius McCue died in Cronulla on 7 September 1962. Excellent, a full name and a lead to pursue in the newspapers.

I found Paddy's death and funeral notices in the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald on the day after his death. Paddy's death notice provides the name of Paddy's late wife and those of his brothers and sisters. No offspring are mentioned, a matter which cries out for further research.

The funeral notices were paid for by the St George Motor Boat Club and St Michaels Golf Club, but why was no notice published in Paddy's football clubs? Had he simply lost contact with them, or had there been disputes, conflict, ex-communication? There's another puzzle for me to investigate someday.

The Sydney Morning Herald of 8 September 1962 noted that a minute's silence for Paddy would take place at the SCG later that day, just before the NSWRL preliminary final between Newtown and Western Suburbs. If Paddy's spirit was watching over the Bluebags that day, I'm afraid it wasn't enough. Wests won 23-13, giving the Magpies the right to be defeated by the all conquering St George in the 1962 grand final.

My search for Paddy McCue is far from over. The biggest chunk of research, thoroughly checking through newspapers and footy magazines, has barely begun.

I have enjoyed working my way through The Whistle, a curious magazine which covered all four codes of football in Sydney in 1910.

Next, I will need to spend time chasing through The Arrow, The Referee and other papers. Then there's Rugby League News, the NSWRL's official forerunner to Big League from 1920 to 1973.

The Mitchell Library's set is far from complete - does anybody else have this magazine? Since publications such as these do not have indexes, my only option is to work through them systematically, copying anything which sounds vaguely useful.

My major piece of advice for researchers it to note down everything you find, including dates and page numbers, to help you find them again. It is also worthwhile to take a note of every source you've checked, even the sources which didn't contain anything relevant. This will save a great deal of duplication, and prevent you from going back to the same sources unwittingly.

Furthermore, librarians are better able to help researchers who know precisely what they need and exactly what they've already checked.

There are still many gaps in my Paddy McCue story.

I feel as if I am getting to know the man described in The Whistle of 4 June 1910 as a 'big, thumping, energetic forward', but what a shame he died before I was born. Dead he may be, but pictures of Paddy and tales of his talent have brought him to life for me.

There's information out there, but researchers have to dig it out and pull it all together. Look out for my book on Paddy McCue - in about 20 years' time!

Submitted to RL1908 by the author: andycarr @ rocketmail.com
Originally appeared in loosehead Magazine, Issue #5, Summer 1998-99

ANDY CARR IS A LIBRARIAN, AMATEUR HISTORIAN AND WAS A FREQUENT CONTRIBUTOR TO LOOSEHEAD MAGAZINE. WHEN NOT COMPILING SCRAPBOOKS ON THE BALMAIN TIGERS, NEWTOWN JETS AND RUGBY LEAGUE POLITICS, HE REGULARLY ATTENDS RUGBY LEAGUE MATCHES.