Rugby league has seen a few interchange scandals over the years but the first and perhaps most consequential robbed Western Suburbs of a finals berth back in 1975.
In a round 15 match between the Magpies and Canterbury at a packed Belmore Oval, Wests forward Mick Liubinskas stood front and centre.
“I’ve had to relay this yarn a couple of times in my life,” the now 70-year old former Magpie told Big League.
“Basically it came out of an idea from our master coach Don Parish. He was a real innovator and he liked to come up with a lot of different moves for certain situations.
“He wanted to use me as a strike player, so he picked me in reserve grade. He said ‘play your game then we’ll bring you off, have a shower, get changed, have a quick massage and be ready to go on in first grade.’
“The plan was to wait for a key moment of the match, then for me to come on and run a specific move to try and break open the game.”
The move started with halfback Tommy Raudonikis passing to forward Chris Wellman. Wellman would drag in a few defenders, then pass to a fresh Liubinskas who would use his pace to bust the opposition defence.
“We were down at the time and struggling to crack them, so the move worked an absolute treat.
“Chris Wellman was a fantastic player and as a forward, he was just as effective passing the ball as he was running it. He put it straight in my breadbasket and I went through without a hand laid on me.
“Gary Dowling, rest in peace, was fullback for the Bulldogs and he tried to cut me off but I just beat him to the corner to score.”
Liubinskas’ try helped Wests fight back to claim a 7-all draw that would have proved crucial in a tight finals race.
“The issue was I was supposed to finish the game in reserve grade, but they took me off early,”Liubinskas explained.
“In those days, you had to finish the game and then you were asked to sit on the bench for first grade in case there was an injury.”
Liubinskas said it didn’t take Canterbury’s Peter ‘Bullfrog’ Moore long to spot the Magpies’ error and shortly after the match Wests learnt of a protest, which made headlines in the following day’s papers.
“In the end it was judged by the New South Wales Rugby League that I was an ineligible player and consequently we were stripped of the point.
“We missed out on the semi-finals that year because of that one point. So, you could say it was bad luck, but if we didn’t score the try we wouldn’t have drawn the game and earned the competition point in the first place.”
Despite the saga, Liubinskas said he still looked back on that afternoon fondly.
“It was Canterbury. It was Belmore. The place was chock-a-block and that was hard to beat.
“We had some great battles with them over the years and that was another special game. Tommy led from the front, as he always did, and it showed what an innovator Don Parish was, even if he did get it a little wrong.”
