Vale Peter Crittle: Australia's highest rugby achiever

Wallaby Peter Crittle in action against the All Blacks in 1962.

Charles Peter Crittle AO
July 21, 1938 - June 28, 2024

With the death of Peter “Charlie” Crittle, Australian rugby has lost one of its most distinguished all-round contributors. The length, breadth and depth of his involvement cannot briefly be transcribed: “I’ve been involved in rugby all my life,” he told me in 2016. “I started playing when I was seven at Chatswood Primary. I progressed to playing with Sydney High then Sydney Uni. From there I went in to the Wallabies. I didn’t retire as a player until I was nearly 40, then went into coaching and coached the Waratahs and various club and country teams. I went into administration and became president of NSW Rugby and eventually President of the Australian Rugby Union.”
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With 15 Test appearances and so many rugby feathers in his cap, he neglected to mention he also captained Eastern Suburbs to a premiership. “Peter, arguably, could be regarded as the highest achiever in Australian rugby history. Not as the greatest player, but for the greatest involvement in all phases of rugby,” says Wallaby teammate Dick Marks, who served as Australia’s National Director of Coaching from 1974-1996 and is possessed of one of the longest rugby memories around.

The son of a Sydney police officer, Crittle commenced a BA at Sydney Uni in 1956, later enrolling in a Diploma of Criminology then Bachelor of Laws, en route to a career as a barrister. After playing centre for High Old Boys, he joined Uni in 1959 as a lock. “Sydney Uni is the original, so far as club rugby goes in NSW,” he told me from his north coast nursing home in 2021 ahead of a Sydney Uni Wallaby Legends Lunch, in what was probably his last interview. “The Club means a great deal to me. It’s a way of reliving the great days you had as a player. My first coach was Dick Tooth - a terrific coach. He was followed by Dave Brockhoff - a very original sort of coach. Then it was John Solomon, who was about the best coach I ever had.” 

Crossing paths with any one of this trio of Wallabies would ordinarily be considered notable - it is typical of Crittle to be able to cite all three as coaching influences. Tooth had the better coaching record of Crittle's era, taking the team to premierships in 1961 and 1962 (although the 1962 New Zealand tour took Crittle away for much of that season), and again to the grand final in 1963. Looking back on their lives in rugby for the 2019 Sydney Uni Wallaby Legends Lunch, distinguished 1950s Wallaby captains Solomon and Tooth told me they remembered Crittle as good player and popular club man. “Peter Crittle was a pretty dominant kind of a person - very confident, quite intelligent” recalled Tooth. “He used to talk a lot and be the boss of whatever he could be.” These traits were recognisable throughout Crittle’s career. Dick Marks estimates that Australia won half its lineouts through Rob Heming’s jumping and half through Crittle talking the opposition out of the ball.

Wallaby debut
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Crittle was selected at breakaway for the 1962 Wallaby tour of New Zealand, when John Thornett became captain. Crittle idolised Thornett, his former school captain, and spoke of him as a “guiding light” at Thornett’s memorial service at the SCG in 2019: “His softly spoken modulated voice seemed to create a bond with the people who were listening. I found myself quite mesmerised,” Crittle recalled of hearing Thornett speak for the first time at a school assembly in 1951. “The effect that John Thornett had on me was quite miraculous.”

Also miraculous was the determination with which Crittle rose to speak at Thornett’s memorial service at all. By 2019, a stroke had ravaged his mobility and short term memory. And yet, there he stood in front of hundreds of people elucidating a beautiful eulogy in memory of his old skipper, until, overtaken by the emotion and physical challenge of the moment, the great orator halted mid-sentence, unable to continue. 
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The enormous effort Crittle had made to speak under such circumstances of ill-health spoke volumes of his love and respect for his old skipper, who had led Australia through to great success in the 1960s. The 9-9 opening Test draw at Wellington in 1962 announced the first stirrings of success for what would become known as the “Thornett Era”.

Crittle debuted in the second Test at Dunedin, against a mighty New Zealand pack. Picked in the back row at flanker alongside Geoff Chapman, with Rob Heming at No.8., Crittle put in a strong performance, drawing applause from the crowd of 25,000. "He charged into the heavy stuff but it was his clever distraction of one or more opponents in ruck and lineout which made it difficult to believe this was his initial test," Australia's hooker Peter Johnson later wrote.

Australia went down by the narrowest of margins, three nil and Crittle was again selected for the third Test at Auckland in which Australia lost by the respectable margin of 18-6. 

The 1962 Wallaby side that toured New Zealand at the start of the Thornett Era.

Golden Thornett era
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The Wallabies had adopted gold jerseys the previous season and were ready for a golden era. First came the 1963 win over England in Sydney, the first time Australia had defeated a major rugby nation at home for 29 years. Crittle missed out but was selected for the tour of South Africa, a three month safari featuring some of the best rugby of the era. 
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It was the trip of a lifetime from the equator to the Cape for the young Australians. Crittle captained Australia in uncapped matches against Eastern Province and Central Universities and combined with hooker Peter Johnson as entertainer-in-chief on the long tour bus rides. For Crittle, humour was an essential ingredient to surviving the pressures of elite sport. His teammates lived in awe - and sometimes fear - of his brilliant wit and practical jokes. The bizarre extremes of Apartheid weren't spared the lash of Crittle’s mockery. When an official warned the Wallabies not to fraternise with black women during the tour, Crittle asked him what the punishment would be. “You’ll be whipped”, responded the official somewhat flippantly, prompting Crittle to enquire whether both events could be arranged simultaneously.

Crittle (centre) watches Greg Davis with ball in hand against the Springboks in 1963.

Career highlight at altitude

​The Wallabies played more than 20 matches through Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa. Injured at the outset, Crittle missed the first Test at Pretoria. The formidable homeside, unbeaten in 14 Tests, won 14-3. For the second Test in Cape Town, Crittle and Rob Heming were paired as locks in a partnership that would endure. Thornett’s men carried the day, taking down the unofficial world champs 9-5. 

The third Test brought a career highlight at altitude at Ellis Park, Johannesburg, where no Australian side had won before (or since). Crittle danced Australia to glory with a famous pirouette out the back of a brilliantly executed Jim Boyce to Rob Heming lineout on halfway in front of 65,000 fans. “I slipped the ball to Dick Marks, who ran into the opposing outside centre. He passed to John Williams, who was a very fast winger, and took the ball over the line,” Crittle recalled, with crystal clarity, for my interview in 2021.
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Australia’s unprecedented 11-9 victory shook the rugby speaking world. No international side had beaten the Boks in successive tests since 1896. Thornett was carried off on the shoulders of the defeated Spring Boks, but the elation of the experience was tempered by harsher realities when Crittle played in the fourth Test at Port Elizabeth and a race riot broke out between segregated spectators. Australia lost but drew the series - an unheard of achievement. 20,000 people filled George Street in Sydney to welcome home the Wallabies. 

"Sometimes the best ever"​

The following year, Crittle returned to New Zealand, playing all three Tests, including the record breaking 20-5 victory in Wellington. In 1965, he played both matches in Australia’s first ever series win over South Africa. Australia then hit a British Lions speed bump in 1966, enabling this now legendary exchange in Brisbane between Crittle and his skipper. “We narrowly lost the first Test, but in the second we suffered a very heavy loss,” Crittle told me. “At halftime with the score well against us, John Thornett called us together and said ‘chaps, this is simply not us’ - and I said, ‘well, thank God for that - let’s get out of here before someone recognises us!’”

Crittle was selected for the 1966/7 grand tour of the British Isles, France and Canada. Wales and the Barbarians were beaten for the first time and a record score was racked up over England. Thornett called the team “sometimes the best ever”. After a series of illnesses, Crittle missed the opening Test against Wales but ran out at Murrayfield against Scotland, now paired with Ross Teitzel. The injury-hit Australian side failed to fire. 
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Crittle played in the 23-11 trouncing of England, when Ken Catchpole was hailed as “the greatest scrum half the world has seen” by the President of the English Rugby Union. “That was probably our best game,” recalled Crittle. “England were very confident, they were red hot favourites and had a champion team comprising a lot of ex-British Lions. We got right on top of them in the forwards, in particular, and were able to give outstanding ball to our halfbacks Catchpole and Hawthorne who, between them, completely outplayed the English side.”

This strength in the forwards was unusual for Australia. “We had possibly the best leaping lineout jumper in the world at that time in Rob Heming, Peter Johnson was without peer as a hooker and we had a great breakaway combination in Greg Davis and Jules Guerassimoff,” recalls Dick Marks, who played centre. “Crittle was a very smart operator in the lineout and Catchpole had that great ability to - if not turn bad ball into good ball, at least turn it into usable ball.”

​Crittle played with injury in the loss to Ireland that proved to be his final Test. In all, the tour lasted four and a half months and 36 matches. “Unfortunately today they are just about football and nothing else. We used to get the opportunity to see the countryside, meet the people. It was marvellous,” Crittle told me. “My brother John was in business with the Beatles in men’s clothing on Carnaby Street and we got to enjoy their hospitality.”

Eastern Suburbs premiership 
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Back home, Crittle then played with Eastern Suburbs from 1967 to 1971, contributing to an unparalleled period of success. The Sunday Telegraph named him 1969 Player of the Year for captaining their first Premiership since 1947. “He took command of a team of no great status and deftly combined with coach Barney Walsh to weld them into a finely drilled unit,” opined the paper.
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“Peter’s influence was such that he drew people to the club,” Easts teammate John Cox told me. Cox remembered Crittle as a great motivator of men and the “best captain” he ever played with. “He’d been overlooked for a trip with the Wallabies to South Africa in ’69 and I think he had a point to prove… He was an academic on rugby. In a time when it was unusual, he and Barney Walsh would go through each opposing player’s faults and weaknesses. I think that made a great difference.”

Chairman of the Australian Coaching Panel
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As the stars of the Thornett era retired, Australian rugby slipped back to its former low ranking. Australia lost to Tonga in 1973, but in 1974, Bill McLaughlin appointed Dick Marks as Australia’s first National Director of Coaching and Dick chose Peter Crittle to chair a Coaching Panel to help formulate a National Coaching Plan. According to 1991 World Cup winning coach Bob Dwyer, this coach education program was the single most important development in the history of Australian rugby.

“Peter and myself actually went on a fact finding tour around the world,” recalls Marks. “We not only tried to pick the brains of our rugby opponents but we got as far across to American gridiron teams - we even went down to Mexico to study the footwork of a famous matador!”

With the wisdom gleaned, a coaching manual was then authored by Marks and high quality coach accreditation was rolled out through residential coaching camps. In the late 1980s, the system was elevated by integration into the Australian Institute of Sport, forming the basis of our player and coaching pools for the 1991 and 1999 World Cup victories. “Out of that era of administrators and coaches and coach educators, Australian rugby really developed into the No. 1 team in the world. We owe it all to that era,” says Bob Dwyer. 

"Well Dick Marks had an enormous effect on the game... he transformed the Australian teams" Crittle told me in 2016. "There were other men who uplifted the game by virtue of their own playing ability. They became role models for the way to play the game. Players in particular like Ken Catchpole, Phil Hawthorne and Rob Heming - they became world class players in their own right and passed that on to Australian players who came after them."

The PNG press reports on Crittle and Dick Marks' coaching development travels in 1976.

The brotherhood of rugby

​In the rising tide that followed this skills development, Crittle coached an undefeated 1980 Sydney side that included the likes of the Ella brothers, Simon Poidevin and Michael Hawker. After two seasons, he then coached NSW for a further two. He was president of NSW Rugby from 1993-1999, then Vice President of the ARU (1994-2001) through the heady days of the introduction of professionalism, when Charlie represented the Establishment, staring down the Kerry Packer World Rugby Corporation. Finally he became President of the ARU from 2001-05, presiding over the the successful 2003 Rugby World Cup. 
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He received an Order of Australia, the Joe French Award from the ARU and the Vernon Pugh Award from the International Rugby Board for services to rugby. In 2009, he accepted his last coaching duties as coach of the Gentlemen of Murwillumbah. Finally, in 2022, Rugby Australia inducted him into the Wallaby Hall of Fame. Then, like Alexander, he may well have wept for there were no more rugby worlds to conquer.

A dapper dresser and collector of rare books and memorabilia, Crittle had a zest for adventure throughout his life. Beyond football he maintained chambers in Lismore and divided his time between Byron Bay and Sydney until around ten years ago, when he suffered his stroke, confining him largely to life in a nursing home. 

This made it extraordinary to witness his re-awakenings at rugby reunions. When a stooped and ailing Crittle shuffled in to the 2016 reunion of the 1966/7 Wallabies, the twinkle eyed master story teller re-emerged to hold the room in hysterics, before clinching the emotion of the moment. “It falls to very few men to enjoy the experience that we’ve enjoyed in our lifetime and to live it all again the way we do,” he told the Wallabies, wives and widows. “I regard almost all the fellas that I played international rugby with as among my very best friends. They’re the mates that you go looking for when times are tough, when you need a bit of a kick up the bum, when you need some sort of - balance - friendship — love, even. They’re the men you go to - and it doesn’t happen often in life. We are very, very, very - lucky.” 

Peter Crittle is survived by his four daughters, eight grandchildren, and ten thousand stories recalling a life “lived to the fullest”.