verging_on_random

In memory of a genuinely great Australian

January 29, 2007 on 7:28 pm | In Uncategorized |

Trevor Allan died at the weekend. He was 80 and died peacefully at home, according to the report. I hope that it was so.

I’ll leave others to write about his feats as one of the greatest rugby players ever to represent Australia. I knew him afterwards, when he was in his 50s and commenting on rugby for the ABC. His son, Glenn, was in an under 16 cricket team that I managed. Trevor turned up on Saturday mornings every now and then to watch. If you didn’t follow rugby you wouldn’t have had a clue that he had any special claim to greatness. He was just a good bloke with a terrific sense of humour and a wonderfully balanced perspective on life.

Glenn used to play in the senior team that I captained - we encouraged juniors to play in the senior comp as well - and one day we struggled to get 11 players on the field. Somebody, I forget who, persuaded Trevor to put the whites on. I was the worst bowler ever to bowl a ball in a proper game of cricket but for some reason that I can’t remember I gave myself an over that day. The batsman smashed it about two feet off the ground, so hard that it would have gone across the boundary for 6 except that Trevor Allan launched himself horizontally and caught it. He was pleased and happy for me and the team, dismissing any suggestion that he’d done something pretty amazing.

Glenn grew up and became a primary school teacher, which I also thought was pretty wonderful, given the tendency of the rugby mafia to shoe-horn family members into jobs as lawyers or company directors. Trevor just loved his family with a simple trusting love that told the kids he’d support them whatever they did … a thought that many parents give lip service to but few live up to. I lost touch with Glenn over the years, as you do, but I reckon there’s a lot of kids in the world who feel proud of being taught by Mr Allan.

If anyone had suggested that he have a state funeral Trevor would have roared with laughter. For somebody who had achieved so much he was the least pretentious man imaginable. Some who have had far more elaborate public honours heaped upon them at their death deserved it much less then Trevor Allan, but the manner of his going is completely suitable for a man who to me represented Australian values better than any inane poster on a noticeboard.

Vale Trevor … I know that I’m only one of thousands who will be mourning you tonight and wishing I could grace our society as you did.