I played three seasons of rugby with Grant Batty, 1962, 3 and 4, in the ninth, eight and seventh grades respectively, for the Greytown club. Our strip was red, yellow and black and our coach a local farmer, Claude ‘Nip’ Field. His son, Warren, aka Tubby, was our half back and a nephew, Ian, one of the breakaways. I was the other. Grant could play anywhere in the backline and often did but was usually at second five-eighth. He could also score from anywhere on the paddock and often did that too. He was a genius on a rugby field.
One year we were unbeaten and one year I was captain; whether they were the same year I’m uncertain now. Seventh grade, anyway. We would all have been twelve or so. Grant was pissed off I was made captain and in the team photo (not the one posted) he is sitting next to me with his chest all puffed out and thrusting forward so that I had no choice but to lean back. It’s actually quite a good photo of the two of us because I’m holding the ball and looking quite relaxed and Grant appears as the superstar he was going to be.
We spent quite a lot of time together; our houses were only a block away from each other and his father, Bernie, ran the liquor store at Wright Stephensons, next door to the chemist shop above and behind which we lived. The first time I ever got drunk was at his place, one afternoon after football, when his parents were out and we sampled all the various bottles of spirits Bernie had in his liquor cabinet. I tried Crème de Menthe for the first time and have never tried it again.
Grant was easily the most competitive person I’ve ever known and yet there was a side to him that was old-fashioned, mannerly, almost chivalric. I remember once we both fancied the same girl, Ngaire Woolcott, a big slow blonde who was the baker’s daughter, and one lunchtime (we were still at primary school) we went up to her and asked her which one of us she liked? She pointed to Grant and said: ‘I like you!’ Whereupon he turned to me and shook my hand.
Another time, after school, when we were playing Four Square, there was an argument over a line call and Grant got in a huff and stalked off. I called something insulting after him and he turned round and came back, rolling up his sleeves. That’s the only proper fight I can remember having in all of my school days.
After we went to Kuranui College we didn’t see each other so much. We were in different classes and, although I was still playing rugby, we weren’t in the same team any more. He’d gone straight into the higher echelons, maybe even into the First XV. And then, early the next year, we left to go to Huntly and I never saw him again. He married a local girl, off one of the farms to the east and, while I remember how elegant Jill was, I can’t now recall her maiden name.
When Grant retired, at the young age of 26, after a crippling knee injury, they moved to Tauranga and he went into business, and then into local body politics. Something happened after the Crash of ’87, the business (was it to do with timber? Or a pub?) went bankrupt and Grant got his fair share of blame; there were accusations of shady practices and the like but I don’t know how right they were. After he died I watched an interview with him and it was the one thing he was still bitter about; he thought he’d been targeted unfairly because he was a public figure and that the wrongs done, if there were wrongs done, were not done by him.
He was always fair-minded, sometimes comically so, and I doubt he was dishonest in money matters: he had too much pride. Anyway, he took his family to Queensland and I don’t know what he did there apart from coaching rugby teams, including the Maroochydore Swans and the Gold Coast Breakers, plus a spell as Assistant Coach at the Queensland Reds and a period coaching Yamaha Jubilo in Japan’s Top League. His marriage lasted and he and Jill had four kids, three sons and a daughter I think; at least one of them is a decent rugby player. He ended up living in, of all places, Wallabadah in northern NSW, running the General Store and coaching the Quirindi Lions.
All the time I was living in Sydney I knew he was up there somewhere and wondered, now and again, if I should try to get in touch. I never did and I regret that now. On the other hand, the last time I saw him we were both just 14 and he might not even have remembered me. I also watched a half hour TV special done with him, much of it filmed on a golf course, but with some footage of an exhibition match, a friendly, he played in, and it brought back to me the way he ran (very fast) on his little short bandy legs. His red hair had gone grey and then fallen out and he had this huge moustache, which I thought was a mistake; but then I think all moustaches are mistakes.
He had become a good raconteur and had many stories to tell, some against himself. And, like I say, not bitter at all, except about the Tauranga business. A couple of other things: the Battys were Catholic in a resolutely Anglican town, though I don’t know if they went to church; unlike other Catholic families in those days his wasn’t big; he only had the one older sister. I used to wonder if his courtliness came from the church; but it was more likely from his mother. The other thing is, he died on my birthday, when I turned the age he was (he was six months older than me). I’d love to be able to tease him about that; but of course I can’t.
Isinglass 