| The Master: What Made Him Great?
Sean Fagan of RL1908.com
There can hardly have ever been a more popular sportsman with Australian crowds than Dally Messenger. Even on those rare days when the pressmen wrote that "Dally M" wasn't the best footballer on the field, the fans wouldn't have a bar of it.
Why were the fans so enraptured by him - even long after Messenger retired?
In 1910, in the middle of his reign, Messenger captained Australia in a Test against Jimmy Lomas' British Lions.
In a now long established league tradition, the NSWRL linked with a brewery company to sponsor a man-of-the-match competition, voted for by the spectators.
The Brits won the Test, and almost every league reporter that day nominated North Sydney's centre Albert Broomham as the best of the Aussies, rather than Messenger.
However, in the public's eye “Dally M” was far and away the brightest star – he could seemingly do no wrong. Of the more than 15,000 voting forms returned, half voted for Messenger. The next best result was 1,661. Messenger pocketed the £10 prize, while Broomham, in fifth place with 1,273 votes, got nothing.
For the fans who witnessed Messenger at his peak, the recollection of his astounding feats with the ball in the hand, or from his ever-lasting boot, remained a memory of pure gold. One could never tell what Dally would do next. But whatever he did, he did it with the speed, skill and instinct of genius.
Messenger's success and greatness came from his ability to do the unexpected – to do exactly the right thing, at exactly the wrong moment for his opposition.
His actions were all done with a startling suddenness. Whether it was to spring into the air over the head of a tackler to escape their desperate clutches, or to run in the opposite direction away from his own support players because he saw a chance to score – he sized up each situation in the instant he was confronted by it, and immediately acted on instinct alone.
Messenger didn't script his plays; he argued that anyone who hesitated, even momentarily, to consider their options on the football field was already beaten. He openly stated that any first grader who needed the instructions of a coach “was a baby”.
Fortunately for rugby league, Messenger was there at the outset – the two were a perfect fit. His individualistic style, matched with team combination, defined how the 13-man game should be played.
Unique amongst the football codes, rugby league is the only team sport where one player – whether a front rower, winger or five-eighth - has both the opportunity, and indeed the licence, to make the game his own, to orchestrate glorious and memorable victories for his team.
American football is dictated to by the quarter-back. In soccer, rugby union and Australian football, team work is almost an absolute necessity to success – it is practically impossible in these other football codes for one player, no matter how big a star, to be the fulcrum of each scoring drive, to be the one “to pull the strings” throughout the entirety of a match, and certainly not match after match.
In rugby league, it can truly be one man's game. Dally Messenger, and the tens of thousands that cheered him on, founded a spirit for the new 13-man code: that our best footballers must be given the freedom they need to play their own game.
It was this spirit that produced the now century-long cavalcade of stars to have graced our game, allowing each of us in turn, to be thrilled by “the master” of our time.
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