Dick Dunn (rugby league)

Richard 'Dick' Dunn OAM (1920–2006) was an Australian rugby league footballer and coach in the New South Wales Rugby Football League premiership (NSWRFL).

Dunn played 134 matches for the Eastern Suburbs club in the years (1938–47). A local junior of that club, Dunn grew up idolising the senior players, carrying the kit bags of legends like Dave Brown and Ray Stehr; a few years later he was playing alongside of them. Dunn played most of his career in the centres though in later years he moved to lock forward. Dunn played in four premiership deciders in his career, winning in 1940 and 1945.

Dunn is best remembered for the 1945 Grand Final in which he scored 19 of East's 22 points, a record that still stands today for the most points scored in a premiership decider. In an interview with Sean Fagan, Dunn recalls the final minutes of the match –

“Yes well the situation was this, the game was very, very close. They led us 10 to 5 at half time and were playing a mighty game of football.

The scores and play fluctuated and they led us with about four minutes to go by 18 to 17. We got a penalty on the half way line and Ray Stehr [captain] says "kick for the sideline". Wally O'Connell, who played in the game will verify this of course, he was closest to me. Stehr says "which side you going to kick, so I'll go over?" I said "Don't you want the two points - it'll put us in front!" He said "Its too far for you to kick it." Anyway, I had a little bit of trouble in getting the ball onto a mound. In those days there was no sand or anything like that to assist and I couldn't make a mound from the hardness of the centre, you know, the cricket pitch. So I said to Georgie Watt I'm going to kick this "Lomas style" - that's an upright position of the ball you know, standing up? He said "Oh you couldn't kick that Lomas style." And ah of course as soon as it left my boot, I thought this a goer for sure. Some say it landed in the crowd. I know it landed well over the bloody post because we did have a bit of excitement by kicking it - we were winning! Ironically, when Balmain kicked off I anticipated Jorgenson's kick - he was a great footballer and a great goal kicker, probably a lot better than me. I said to myself he'll kick this right here, which was the 25 yard line. But of course even with us having possession of the ball there could have been a scrum and something could have happened, maybe they could've kicked 2 points with a field goal and all that. Anyway, sure enough, I've caught the ball fortunately and this is the truth and actual facts - I punted it from our own 25 to find the line 5 yards from the corner post under the SCG scoreboard! Right? We won the scrum against the feed and this is where Lisle and O'Connell put a move on that, I'm not quite sure what the name of the move was, any rate, they went bang, bang, bang and fortunately they just passed me the ball and I scored in the corner and that really won the game. It was 22-18 with about 10 seconds to play.

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