The way in which rugby icon Alec Evans has been honoured over the past 16 months proves sport can properly celebrate elders rich with accomplishments.

Too often, it seems that the rush to pander to the youthful, impatient end of society means only a passable job is done to honour the precious pioneers who paved the road for them. A very few are still in the trenches. Wayne Bennett is still setting standards at 73. He’s like a Hall of Fame road tour each week in the NRL.

The Dolphins may have faded in the second half of the season but what he’s done to establish the cornerstones of heart, 80-minute fight and passion have set up the new club for years to come. Just as Bennett’s coaching is far more than what happens on the football paddock, Evans coached life.

He was named a Life Member of Rugby Australia last year. On Thursday, the Queensland Rugby Union unveiled the Alec Evans Gym at the new Ballymore. The 84-year-old, needing a walking stick these days, was proudly there to enjoy it with wife Kay.

“Alec is one of the great influencers if I am to use a term for the young to understand,” QRU President Roger Gould said wryly.
“The ‘Scrum Doctor’ and the technical elements of his coaching career are well chronicled. In my 60 years of experience in Queensland rugby, the hand of Alec has touched more widely than anyone in the development of people, those social and moral parts that make all of us.”

Evans would be the first to shoot down too many hints that he started life as an angel. He played junior rugby league before making the move from Woodford to boarding school at Brisbane Grammar where seven decades of devotion to rugby began.

On the field, he was an uncompromising forward and “far too aggressive” to be picked by the “woke people running Australian rugby at the time”, according to former Wallabies coach and lifetime friend Alan Jones. Evans’ only tour as a Wallaby to New Zealand in 1962 was ruined before the launch pad by glandular fever.

Evans was a talisman for Queensland teams throughout the 1960s. He returned for a final hurrah in 1973. He wore a bathing cap in one game. It was to protect his famously bald pate from the sun by one account. Another version was protection from cuts should he be forced to retaliate to a head butt.

Jokes about that bald head were some payback after exhausting training sessions as Evans’ Wests players showed on tour in France in 1986. A visit to Lourdes and the fabled healing waters of the grotto ended with players splashing water on the coach’s head. Regrowth was definitely one miracle too far.

Evans’ coaching resume is vast. He holds the singular achievement of being an assistant coach beside four Wallabies coaches, including the memorable 1984 Grand Slam and 1986 Bledisloe Cup triumphs with Jones. He guided top grade premierships with three different clubs and coached Brisbane Grammar sides through the age grades for decades.

Alec Evans (with the ball) during one of his many outings for the Reds. (Image: supplied)

The hand-picked gathering to honour Evans at Ballymore said it all.

Gould, Garrick Morgan, Julian Gardner, Andrew Slack and Chris Latham are Wallabies who entered coaching with lashings of the Evans’ values. He left his mark on school principals (Michael Carroll and Brian Short), high-performance figures (Brett Robinson, Jeff Miller and Phil Mooney) and many others.

To have a gym named after Evans is an ideal fit. He was the “keeper of the standards” who drilled and drove players to become better versions.

Gould, the world’s best fullback in his prime, joked that one Evans mantra would have to be modernised from the days when he saw backs as a necessary evil. “Don’t drop the ball and keep it in front of my forwards,” was a typical bark from Evans.

Slack, the former Wallabies captain, explained the warmth players feel towards Evans: “Whether it was an Under-9 rower, an Under-16Cs footy player or the best Wallaby, I think Alec was a coach for life with his attitude in sports coaching but also personal development with his interest in people.”

In New York this week, tennis feted a pioneer in fitting fashion as well. The centre court setting between matches at the US Open was perfect to acknowledge Billie Jean King, 79.

It was 50 years since King played the pivotal role in brokering equal prizemoney for female and male players for the first time at the 1973 edition.
King had roused fellow players to threaten a boycott. Former first lady Michelle Obama delivered a tribute for King that will continue to be replayed by women in all sports.

It’s bigger than the paycheque, she said: “This is about how women are seen and valued in this world.”

The footy codes played by women in this country are in that space at the moment rationalising what greater progress, commercial factors and the Matildas-afterglow looks like for them.

JIM TUCKER has specialised in sport, the wider impacts and features for most of his 40 years writing in the media.