After all, Parramatta couldn’t field a third-grade Colts team, so a Wests Barbarians squad was formed from largely over-weight Emus.

Parramatta’s usual home ground at Merrylands was unavailable, forcing a relocation to Lidcombe and consequently inspiring the Easts officials who had grown up with the stories on Tommy and John “Dallas” Donnelly belting each other before matches.

However, none of the Easts Colts were even born back then, meaning the “Beasts” co-coaches, Elia Economia and Peter Tate, had to quickly force feed them Sydney sport’s social history.

Peter Shipway, the Easts director in charge of the Colts, explains: “The kids are all under 20. They had no clue about the stories of Dallas and Tommy until the coaches told them. All though the week leading up to the game, the coaches were saying, ‘We’re the Silvertails. We’ve got the money.’ The kids were rolling their eyes and the old timers in the dressing room thought it was fantastic.”

And the opposition was quintessential Fibro, as Shipway says: “Basically it was a Penrith team playing under the guise of being Parramatta. When Penrith folded, they formed the Wests Barbarians to try and get the game some traction out west.”

Former Easts player John O’Neill, who was also chief executive of the then Australian Rugby Union in two iterations, says, “In the week that rugby closed down Penrith, the Easts Colts visited the spiritual home of the Wests Magpies at Lidcombe Oval. Playing Parramatta. Fibro country and therapy of the sort Tommy and Dallas were famous for. Mungoes often lead the way in motivational skills.”

It may have taken the rah rahs forty years to catch on but the Colts' two coaches deserve praise for turning the motivation upside down.

When, as Wests coach, I pitched the underprivileged, unappreciated and unaffected western suburbs Fibros mentality against the overbearing, over indulged and over there Manly superiority, Sea Eagles supremo, Ken Arthurson, countered by pointing out the cars driven by our club doctor and president.

Dr Bob McInerney drove a Rolls Royce and Bill “The King” Carson owned a Mercedes, while Arko pointed out he had a Ford (courtesy of a local dealer).

I often thought it would have been better for Arko to retaliate with: “Of course we’re the Silvertails. We live in God’s country, deserve our beachside mansions and all our children know the first three letters of the alphabet are BMW.”

(Crafty Bozo Fulton, as coach of the Roosters, took this tack, demanding of his players before a 1980 preliminary final against Wests: “Would you want to live in a fibro house? Or a Coogee cliff top?” Easts thrashed Wests but we did score one try).

The Easts co-coaches seized the opportunity Bozo took and Arko missed, with Eponomu and Tate talking up the virtues and comforts of being an Eastern Suburbs Silvertail. It would have delighted Tate’s father, Murray, who was a Wallaby five-eighth on the 1953 tour of South Africa and renowned for never
missing a game though injury.

Shipway said of his Saturday afternoon at Lidcombe: “The kids, who are only 18, 19 years old, embraced it, even the face slapping. Us old timers thought it was wonderful. And the surface of Lidcombe Oval was in terrific condition.”