Australian Dictionary of Biography

Laurie Nichols, no date

Courtesy of Julie Besgrove

Lawrence James (Laurie) Nichols (1922–2000), rugby league fan, wool classer, and charity worker, was born on 31 December 1922 at Cooma, New South Wales, seventh surviving child of locally born parents William John (Bill) Nichols, labourer, and his wife Margaret, née Stokes. Laurie attended St Brigid’s Convent School, Cooma, where he was introduced to rugby league football. While still at school he took up boxing at the local police boys’ club. Though he never progressed to boxing professionally, he would compete in tournaments when the Jimmy Sharman boxing troupe travelled into the region. He assisted his father in gathering, carting, and selling firewood, and he later worked at a general store at Cooma and tanned and sold rabbit skins.

Enlisting in the Australian Imperial Force on 24 October 1941 for service in World War II, Nichols described himself as a labourer. He served in Papua with the 2/17th Light Anti-Aircraft Battery (May–November 1942) and the 234th LAA Battery (November 1942–June 1943), and in New Guinea with the 2/17th Infantry Battalion (January–March 1944). His service record lists illnesses including dengue fever and malaria, accidental injuries including concussions and contusions, and several absences without leave. He was discharged as medically unfit in Sydney on 4 September 1945, and returned to his wife Cecilia Mary Brady, whom he had married while on leave on 28 July 1943, at the Roman Catholic Church, Wentworth Falls, Leura, New South Wales.

Settling into life in the Blue Mountains region following the war, Nichols worked as a timberman before becoming a wool classer in the early 1960s. He worked mainly in the warehouses of C. E. Newling & Son at Pyrmont on Sydney Harbour, and in a number of woolsheds throughout New South Wales (including Nyngan and Brewarrina) and in Tasmania (including King Island and Flinders Island). He developed a reputation for his methodical approach to wool classing and his elegantly constructed wool bins.

Nichols developed a friendship with Springwood resident Bob Williams, whose brother Sid played first grade for Balmain Rugby League Football Club (the Tigers) between 1966 and 1970. Travelling to Sydney for Balmain matches at Leichhardt Oval with the Williams brothers, Nichols became a particularly vocal and recognisable supporter of the club. Usually dressed in a singlet in the club colours of black and gold, in a booming voice he urged on Balmain’s players and encouraged other supporters to do likewise. He typically paced along the sidelines, shadow-boxing throughout, and punching the air emphatically whenever Balmain scored. In June 1969 the Balmain club acknowledged his contribution by presenting him with a blazer inscribed with ‘No. 1 supporter’ beneath the club’s badge. The 1969 season culminated in an unexpected grand final win over a more fancied South Sydney team, with Sid Williams scoring the winning try for Balmain.

Over the next thirty years, Nichols was a regular attendee of not only Balmain’s first-grade matches, but also their midweek training sessions. He commuted regularly from the Blue Mountains—and later from the central coast—to Sydney to watch Balmain’s lower-grade and junior teams play. Featuring regularly in televised rugby league matches, he was the focal point of Balmain’s fans in mass media. When profiling rugby league supporters, journalists would often use him as their example. They would also focus on his talent for creating rhymes for individual Balmain players, such as ‘Garry Jack, world’s greatest back’ (Megahey 1988, 111) and ‘Wayne Pearce, he tackles so fierce’ (Pearce with Heads 1990, 49).

When Nichols formed his allegiance with the Balmain club, it played in a Sydney suburban competition run by the New South Wales Rugby League. The competition expanded in the early 1980s, and by the 1990s it had evolved into a national league. Following struggles for the control of the game that culminated in the ‘Super League war,’ by 1999 the competition had become the National Rugby League, with the new governing body promising further rationalisation. He spoke out against a merger with the Western Suburbs club at the Balmain club’s meeting on 27 July 1999, but members voted overwhelmingly—299 to 95—in favour of the merger. A new club named Wests Tigers was established to compete in the National Rugby League from the 2000 season.

In the last twenty years of his life, Nichols was committed to fund-raising and charity work. He believed that one could overcome feelings of depression by doing good for others. Besides establishing a trust fund, he accompanied Balmain players on visits to children’s hospitals, spoke at schools and youth clubs with boxing trainer Johnny Lewis, and was a guest speaker at fund-raising events for charities across Australia. Following his wife’s death in 1978, he entered a de facto relationship with Eva Tsang. Survived by Eva, and by his daughter from his first marriage, Julie, he died on 2 February 2000 in Sydney, and, after a funeral at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church at The Entrance, was buried at Palmdale Memorial Park lawn cemetery, Ourimbah. He was also sadly missed by the forty-six nieces and nephews who referred to him as their ‘Uncle Snow.’ That he died while planning one of his fund-raising events cemented his well-earned reputation for generosity and selflessness.

On the day before his death, Nichols had addressed a training session of Wests Tigers players, pledging his allegiance to the new club in the week of their first official match. Nonetheless, legend persists that he died of a broken heart, unable to face the prospect of witnessing the merged Balmain and Western Suburbs team in action. In 2015 Leichhardt Council renamed a lane outside Leichhardt Oval to Lauries Lane, and local residents decorated it with a celebratory mural. A photographic artwork was installed at Leichhardt Oval in 2017, featuring the white-haired Nichols with his arms raised triumphantly, then aged in his seventies and still physically fit. Accompanying text explained his cult-hero status at Balmain, and the high esteem in which so many supporters of rugby league football, including from other clubs, held him.