How a snake brought a league legend unstuck

CELEBRITY SWINGER

Greg Dowling, a cornerstone of Queensland success during the early years of the rugby league State of Origin series, has always had a love for golf, a passion which continues today where he is a regular on the fairways of the Ingham course in north Queensland. 

Inside Golf’s Peter Owen caught up with Dowling not long after a deadly reptile had conspired to derail his chances at the Sunshine Coast Spring Classic. 

GREG Dowling, the former Broncos and Maroons front-row enforcer, isn’t sure whether it was the slow play of the group in front, or the brown snake coiled around his golf ball in the rough on Noosa Springs’ fifth hole, that brought his game unstuck.

“I’m allergic to snakes,” he said. “I’m terrified of the bloody things,” a curious confession from a man whose 11 games for Queensland and 12 for the Kangaroos were built on unflinching courage and intense aggression.

His meeting with the snake, guarding Dowling’s Titleist No 1 in the long grass with possessive zeal, couldn’t have come at a worse time. 

Dowling was playing in the final round of this year’s Sunshine Coast Spring Golf Classic – a 72-hole tournament in which club golfers play four of the region’s finest courses, their aggregate stableford scores determining the winners.

After the first round at Maroochy River, he’d led the field with 38 points. The next day, at Twin Waters, he tallied 40 points to again win the daily prize. And, after taking the honours for a third straight day with 38 points at Peregian, he led the field by a whopping nine points going into the final 18 holes.

But that’s where it ended, his progress halted as certainly as if he’d run full speed into a Blocker Roach tackle. Dowling could cobble together only 25 points around Noosa Springs, allowing Southport visitor Merv Tappenden to snatch a one-point win over the former rugby league star turned politician.

“We had this group of social players in front of us, who were just so slow,” he said. “Then there was the snake. I couldn’t concentrate. Anyway, there’s always next year.”

Dowling, these days, spends most of his time in his beloved North Queensland, where he’s a member of the Ingham Golf Club, the place where he first learned to play the game as a youngster.

At the time, though, the fast-paced action of rugby league held more appeal for a youngster who revelled in the physicality of the game, and whose talent soon caught the eye of recruiters who convinced him his future was in Brisbane.

He played for Wynnum Manly in the Brisbane league competition, making his debut for the Seagulls in 1981 and winning a place in the Queensland side for the 1984 State of Origin series. 

In the second game, played in drenching rain at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Dowling featured in an unforgettable Origin moment when he clung to a ball which had ricocheted from the crossbar after a Wally Lewis kick, and slid under the posts for a freakish try, his muddied face alive with a triumphant grin.

The Maroons went on to win that game 14-2 and clinch a series win that made it five from the first five series played. 

Firmly established as one of the game’s outstanding props, Dowling played all three games in the 1985 State of Origin series and both Test matches of that year’s Australian tour of New Zealand, before heading to the United Kingdom, where he spent one glorious season with Wigan.

Back in Australia in 1986, he was again chosen for Queensland in State of Origin, then headed back to the UK as part of the touring Kangaroos, playing in every Test. In 1988 he became a foundation member of the Broncos, and the following year was Brisbane’s player of the year.

Injury forced his retirement from the game in 1991. He had played 164 club matches for Wynnum-Manly, Wigan, Northern Suburbs and the Brisbane Broncos; 11 State of Origins for Queensland; and 12 Tests for Australia, scoring a total of 26 tries and, incongruously, kicking one field goal (for Wigan).

But as much as his rugby league achievements earned him a place as one of the game’s greats, Dowling’s recollections of those times are full of golfing adventures.

He’d picked up golf again while at Wynnum-Manly, playing regularly at Wynnum golf course with mates and fellow footballers, travelling to the Sunshine Coast for games at Caloundra
and Headland and, later, sneaking in a round or two at the old Hyatt Coolum during Origin camps.

“When I was in England in 1985 with Wigan I played at St Andrews – one of the best things I’ve ever done – and at Royal Liverpool and Royal Lytham and St Annes. Fabulous courses, all of them.”

Dowling says he enjoys golf because of the challenge it poses to an individual.

“I’d played team sports all my life,” he said. “But with golf it’s just you. Just you against the course and, I guess, against yourself.

“There’s no better feeling than hitting a crisp iron shot, or sinking a long putt.”

He says he used to be able to bomb drives 300 metres or further but, at 64, the strength of his game is now chipping and putting.

Dowling recently sold his Oporto chicken franchise in Townsville and is hopeful of perhaps securing a position with the old Queensland Nickel refinery, which was sold to a Swiss-based group a couple of years ago by Clive Palmer.

Palmer and Dowling have been friends for years, with Dowling playing an advisory role in Palmer’s golf course assets, which include two courses on the Gold Coast, one at Port Douglas, one in Perth, and Palmer’s controversial Coolum resort.

Dowling contested the 2019 federal election for Palmer’s United Australia Party for the seat of Herbert, and the 2020 Queensland state election as the UAP candidate for Townsville. He also ran as an independent for mayor of Townsville in early 2020.

None of those campaigns were successful and Dowling is not actively considering running for public office again. “It’s hard yakka,” he said, “and I copped a lot of flak for it.”

But he still believes he has something to offer and feels his contribution to public life could make a difference.

“If Clive wants to go again, who knows where I’ll end up?” he said.

In the meantime, he’s enjoying watching the revival of the Broncos, expects them to do even better next year as their young talent matures, and reckons Kevin Walters has shown the rugby league world he knows how to coach.

And he wants another crack at that Spring Classic on the Sunshine Coast – to show everybody, including himself, that he’s no choker.