They were roaring in the Magpies’ sheds. It was all wall-banging and hoarse, guttural cries; Vikings firing up for battle. To the new kid in the adjacent Manly dressing shed, 20-year-old John Gibbs, they sounded mad.
Then he heard his name mentioned. And someone suggest that they break his legs.
There’d been a bit of buzz about young Gibbs in the news that week. Rugby League Week had talked him up as “one to watch”.
And he was: Gibbs was skilful, quick, evasive. He was a young, good-looking rooster with blonde, curly hair, a surfer from North Narrabeen.
And all of that stuff, for one man in the Western Suburbs dressing room, was like a blood-red rag to an old rank bull.
In 1976 the Magpies were entering what could be described as their “feared” years. What they lacked in skill, they made up for with "aggression" better described as "brutality".
The pack was led by the enforcer, John “Dallas” Donnelly. There was a young tearaway called Les Boyd. Jim Murphy had played for Australia. Ron Giteau played up for Australia.
Shades of David Warner here in the tousle-haired Narrabeen surfer, John Gibbs.
And there was, of course, their halfback and captain, the great Tommy Raudonikis. A man who on that Sunday, June 20, 1976 was one of the big voices in the Magpies room.
“You could hear ‘em,” says Gibbs. “And a lot of it was Tommy. And a lot of it was about me!
“It was all, ‘Get that new c***, Gibbs! We’re gonna kill him! Rip his head off!’
“Someone, probably Tommy, said, ‘When he gets the ball I want his legs broken!’
“The walls were pretty thin at Lidcombe.”
Tom Raudonikis is known as a highly-competitive player whose style of play would have had him rubbed out for life today. But he was also skilful and good at rugby league.
Raudonikis, along with Saints legend Billy Smith, was probably the best halfback of the '70s. He was famous in footy terms, halfback for Australia.
Gibbs was from Sydney’s northern beaches. A surfer, he had stringy, hard, muscles but can’t have weighed more than 70 kilograms.
Yet where footy fans saw an exciting player and most Wests players saw an opponent, Raudonikis saw a blood enemy.
"I used to hate the opposition like they'd done something to my family," Raudonikis once said. "I used to hate the other halfback like he'd done something to my sister.
"If I'd been in my car and seen Steve Mortimer in the car park I'd have run him over."
Gibbs began the game on the sideline after Manly coach Frank Stanton started Alan Thompson at halfback, Ian Martin at five-eighth.
Good-looking surfer from the northern beaches? A threat to state and Test jumpers? John Gibbs ticked a lot of boxes for Tommy Raudonikis.
Soon enough, after kick-off and the game’s traditional “softening up” period, Gibbs got the word – you’re on, son.
He took off his tracksuit, left his socks around his ankles in what would become trademark fashion, and out onto Lidcombe he trotted.
And Raudonikis made his play.
“First scrum I had a dart from the back of it and was tackled,” says Gibbs. “Next thing I’m in agonising pain. Tommy’s biting me fair on the bridge of the nose!
“And I’m not talking a little nip – he’s like a dog on a bone. He’s clamped down, shaking his head.
“I thought I was being eaten.”
Western Suburbs Magpies were tough in 1976 but it wasn't like Manly Warringah Sea Eagles, who would be premiers, were shrinking violets. John Gibbs is back row, far left.
When the ensuing ‘melee’ ended – Terry Randall and Max Krilich weren’t having Tommy so roughing up their young halfback – Gibbs’s nose was a ragged, bloody mess.
“Blood’s flowing out of my hooter, the bridge of my nose is mangled, and I'm sitting on my arse feeling very sorry for myself,” says Gibbs.
“Then I look up at the referee, Greg Hartley, and say, ‘Sir – did you see what happened there? Have a look at my bloody nose!’
“Hartley looks at me, looks at Tommy, looks back at me, and says, ‘Get up, son. You’ll get worse than that.’
“And that was it – welcome to first grade, young fellah!”
Gibbs would have the last word, however, as Manly ran over the Magpies 37-15, with tries to Randall (2), Graham Eadie, Bob Fulton, Terry Hill, Tom Mooney and Steve Norton.
And adding to the tally, a brace on debut: J.Gibbs.
Much to Raudonikis’s chagrin, Rugby League Week editor Geoff "Pinky" Prenter broke the story of The Bite, and Raudonikis was fined $200 by the NSWRL.
A week later League Week ran a famous front page with a headline that screamed "I'm the phantom biter!". There followed a column by Raudonikis which began: "I'm the phantom biter. I bit Manly half John Gibbs on Sunday at Lidcombe Oval."
Years later Raudonikis told Robert Craddock in the Courier Mail that Prenter had paid the fine.
“I would get life if I did that these days," Raudonikis said. "I did bite him on the nose. He got four stitches on one side and three on the other. I did a pretty good job of it. I was concussed at the time ... so I tell everyone.
"He was lucky I didn't bite it off.”
Related: "John Donnelly ran straight at me, spat in my face and said ‘You’re dead’." - Former Eastern Suburbs five-eighth Gary Warnecke on his first grade debut.
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