“Freddy Jones” has two very different meanings in sports parlance. To most sports lovers Freddy Jones was simply the name of one of the Manly-Warringah professional Rugby League team’s toughest ever front row forwards. To members of one 1980s amateur rugby union Sydney sub-district football team “Freddy Jones” had a very different meaning. “Freddy Jones” was actually the name of the Balgowlah Boozing Browns’ one and only set piece play. Several times per game the Brown’s cantankerous, pedestrian and undersized hooker, “Rattler” Edwards, on receiving a penalty, would seize the ball, push the ref out of the way, scream “Freddy Jones”, take a tap kick, then sprint across the field (parallel to the try line) offering dummy passes to all fifteen of his team-mates who would dutifully run at angles off their lumbering diminutive rake. Opposition defenders, mesmerized by the seeming pointlessness of “Rattler’s” activity, would stand back, flat-footed and watch the play unfold. After having offered his final dummy pass “Rattler” would suddenly change direction and dart forward. “Rattler” never scored a try with his “Freddy Jones” play but he, surprisingly, rarely failed to gain a good ten to twenty yards from the set piece where nothing actually happened. No one who ever played with the Boozing Browns will be able to explain why.
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