On this day: "The Replay Game" and a birthday wish that came true by one point

The rematch was set for Wednesday 17th September 1986. The Mercury called it the grudge match of the decade.

40 years ago today!

That Morning's Mercury

The paper that landed in Illawarra driveways on the morning of the replay carried a story about a boy from Fairy Meadow.

He was turning eight that day, and he used a wheelchair. Legg-Perthes Disease of the hip, diagnosed in March that year, caused by a diminished blood supply to the head of the femur. His parents had been told that after treatment and years in a wheelchair his left hip and leg would almost certainly be riddled with arthritis by the time he turned 35.

He had asked for one birthday present. Not a cake. Not a gift. A Hawks win.

The Mercury called him the club's greatest and smallest fan. His mother Diane told the paper he had never missed a game before he got sick and that he had not started missing them in the months since. His favourite player was captain Gordie McLeod, who would wheel him into the Hawks changerooms after the final buzzer to celebrate or commiserate with the players.

Asked for a prediction, he backed his team, then added a condition. He wanted them to win by at least ten, so West Sydney could not protest again and drag everyone back for a third go.

The headline was "Joel's wish upon a star." The boy was me.

The crowd had made its own contribution. Hung on the brick wall beneath the Cross Country Nissan hawk, skull and crossbones at either end, was a dot-matrix printout reading WEST......STAR-WHINGERS.

Down Twelve After a Quarter

Two thousand and fifteen people packed into Beaton Park Basketball Stadium that night, and for ten minutes the Hawks made a liar out of me.

West Sydney led 26–14 after the first quarter and 47–36 at the main break.

Then the third quarter arrived. Illawarra outscored the Westars 34–24, took the lead, and held on to win 98–97.

By one point. Exactly the margin I had asked them not to win by.

How They Actually Won It

The 1986 result gets better the closer you look at it. The Westars made 44 field goals to the Hawks' 35, nine more baskets, and still lost.

The Hawks won it three ways. They forced 22 turnovers. They took 17 offensive rebounds, with Don Bickett pulling down seven of them on his way to 11 boards. And they owned the free-throw line, going 25 from 28. Illawarra made more free throws that night than West Sydney attempted.

Alphonse Hammond top-scored with 21 and did not miss a single one of his ten attempts from the stripe. Jim Bateman added 20, Ray Borner 18, Graham Kubank 15. Gordie McLeod ran the game with seven assists and four steals.

A week later the two clubs met again in the elimination final. The Hawks won that one comfortably and the argument was finally over. West Sydney got the exact same ending as July, in the same building, in front of the same crowd, and had to live with it.

The full highlights from the Hawks YouTube channel

The Man in the Other Jersey

Run your eye down the West Sydney box score from that night and a familiar name appears. Harmison, Chuck. Eighteen points, seven rebounds, for the visitors.

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Chuck would go on to captain the Hawks, then run the club as General Manager leading Hawks to the 2001 Championship. When the Snakepit closed in 1998 he wrote its farewell, and among everything he could have chosen to remember one of the things he singled out was the great years of 1986 and 1987, when Lindstrom and the Killer B's nearly took the Hawks to the promised land.

He was there for the start of it, in the wrong jersey, on my birthday.

Last season I asked Chuck to make up a group with me and Glen Saville at the Hawks golf day. Eighteen holes at Wollongong, Chuck and I sharing a cart.

Forty Years Later

I am now in my 21st-ish year volunteering and working for this club, in that time doing things such as website manager, retired banner and uniform designer, photographer, social media manager in its early days, history archiver, game article writer, behind-the-scenes Championship videographer (keep an eye out for the Hard Work documentary) and a long list of things in between. Every bit of it traces back to a wheelchair parked at the western end of the court at Beaton Park, on a Wednesday night when the NBL made us play a game we had already won.

I asked for a win in a basketball game. Forty years on, the people from that building are some of my closest friends. Some of them are 'family'.

Forty years on, the Snakepit roar still echoes in winter. That grit did not go anywhere, it just moved down the road to WIN Entertainment Centre.

‍BE ONE OF US TOO

Sixteen home games. One building. The same noise the Snakepit made, because the people making it are the same people, and now they have brought their kids.

Become a Hawkhead today

STRONGER. LOUDER. TOGETHER.

Also On This Date

17 September 1994. With a playoff spot on the line against Newcastle, Mick Corkeron threw an alley-oop into traffic in the closing seconds and Melvin Thomas rose over Terry Dozier to dunk it home. Thomas finished with 34 points, 15 rebounds, six blocks and five assists. The Hawks were in. Newcastle was out.

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Story by Joel Armstrong - Hawks media

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