Destiny

22 December 1923, Mt Pleasant Colliery near Wollongong

"Is he dead?"

"No. He's still breathing. Has someone called the ambulance?"

"They're on their way."

Choking on the thick coal dust the miners work frantically in the darkness to free their colleague from the rubble. The man had been filling a skip moments before the rockfall.

Eventually they bring the injured miner to the surface.

"What's his name?" the ambulance officer asks.

"Judy Masters."

"The Judy Masters? The soccer player?"

"Not just any soccer player. The Australian captain no less."

The ambulance speeds off to the hospital.

The injuries are severe. A fractured skull, broken jaw and numerous cuts and bruises. Judy Masters is lucky to be alive, his football career almost certainly over.

But they breed them tough in the Illawarra.

*   *   *

Situated on the coast roughly 85 kilometres south of Sydney and centred on the city of Wollongong, the Illawarra district has produced countless Internationals and national league players.

Looming over the narrow coastal plain is the Illawarra Escarpment, a range of steep sandstone cliffs. The slopes of the escarpment were once covered in forests of toona ciliate, or red cedar. Its timber was a prized building material in colonial New South Wales and it didn't take long for most of the red cedar forests to be wiped out.

Settlers next turned their attention to the outcrops of coal that protruded from the lower slopes of the escarpment. The first mine in the area was established at Mt Keira in 1849. By 1900 there were fifteen mines operating in the Illawarra district. Townships formed around the pitheads in places such as Thirroul, Corrimal, Balgownie and Bulli.

Many of the coal miners were recent migrants from Britain. Along with their worldly possessions, they brought with them their favourite sport. Rugby might have been popular in Sydney but around the coal mining townships of the Illawarra it was the football played predominately with the feet that held sway. Newspapers, for the sake of a diverse readership, called it 'association football', 'British football', or, from around 1910, 'soccer', but under the escarpment everyone knew it as 'football'.

A team called North Illawarra first competed against Sydney clubs in 1887. From the 1890s clubs such as Helensburgh Boomerangs and Balgownie Rangers began competing for the Gardiner Cup, the premier knockout football tournament in New South Wales.

One of the new arrivals was Alexander Masters, a coal miner from Nova Scotia, who with his wife Frances settled in Balgownie towards the end of the 19th century. They produced a brood of 13 children: eight sons and five daughters.

James William Masters, the seventh child, was born on 21 May 1892. At an early age he was given the nickname 'Judy', which stuck with him throughout his life. With 12 siblings Judy was never short of teammates for a backyard game of football. He took his backyard form to Balgownie Public School where he became captain of the school team.

At the age of 12 he started playing junior football with Balgownie Rangers. At 13 he was working alongside his father and brothers at the Corrimal coal mine. The work was hard and dangerous - an explosion at the nearby Mt. Kembla mine in 1902 killed 96 miners and devastated the community.

Football was a welcome relief from the tough grind underground. Young Judy Masters made good on his talent, joining his brothers in Balgownie's senior team in 1907 at the age of fifteen. Balgownie Rangers reached the semi-finals of the Gardiner Cup in 1911 with a team that featured Judy and his older brothers Bob and Charlie. The following season Judy got his first taste of representative football, playing alongside Charlie for the South Coast (another name for Illawarra) in a 2-2 draw with Sydney at Wentworth Park. The journalist 'Volunteer', writing in the Arrow, labelled Masters "a promising colt". Later that year the two brothers played in the South Coast team that hammered Queensland 8-2 in Wollongong. Volunteer called Masters "the most promising forward I have seen in years", and wrote that "he exhibited the skill, speed and stamina which stamps the born footballer."

Masters played the classic centre-forward's role of the time, controlling the ball with his back to goal then sending a pass out to a winger while racing forward to meet the expected cross with head or foot. His strengths were his tenacity, a great ability to read the game, and an instinct for goal. Of slight build - in his prime weighing 64 kilograms and standing just 170 centimetres tall - he was tough and wiry and like most players from the Illawarra appeared to be hewn from the Hawkesbury sandstone of the escarpment.

Grabbing any opportunity he could to improve his game, Masters would turn out for rivals Corrimal in the Gardiner Cup in the years when Balgownie didn't enter a team. In 1913, he joined Newtown in Sydney and made his first appearance in a Gardiner Cup Final, albeit on the losing side. His stocks rose further when he was selected to play for New South Wales against Queensland that same year. Despite losing 3-2, Masters scored both his team's goals including a spectacular effort from distance.

In 1915, Masters was coaxed into playing with Granville, the strongest club side in Sydney. He settled in immediately, banging in five goals in an early season match. But war came calling. On 30 May 1915, Judy Masters enlisted, joining the ranks of the 19th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF).

Masters served in Gallipoli and on the Western Front. In July 1916, he was wounded near Pozières. In June 1918 at Mourlancourt, the 19th Battalion came under heavy shellfire. In the engagement, Private William Williams, a coal miner from the Illawarra, copped a shrapnel splinter to the head and was killed instantly. Masters, who witnessed the death of his mate, wrote a touching letter to a friend about the incident. "I wish you to convey to his dear home folk my heartfelt sympathy in the loss." He signed off with, "Kindly remember me to my old chums. I often think - even muse over - the bonnie South Coast, which from childhood was my home."

Away from the trenches, Masters squeezed in games of football whenever and wherever he could by playing in AIF teams. There is some evidence to suggest he played for an Australian army team that defeated Chelsea at Stamford Bridge near the end of the Great War. If there was a silver lining to his time in the army it was meeting his wife to be, Anne Barraclough from County Durham, who he married in Australia in 1920.

On his return to Australia, Masters went back to work in the mines and resumed playing for his old club Balgownie Rangers.

On 6 May 1922, the 30-year-old Judy Masters took the train to Sydney along with 14 teammates from the Illawarra district. They were headed to Wentworth Park to play a trial against a Metropolitan X1. This was not your run of the mill inter-district game. At stake, for a good performance, was a chance to represent your country.

c 1906, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England

A group of boys were playing football in the street with plenty of energy and imagination. In their heads they were the next Colin Veitch, Bill McCracken or the flying winger Jock Rutherford - all stars of the powerful Newcastle United side that would win three League Championships, one FA Cup, and be three times FA Cup runners up between 1905 and 1910. The ball the boys played with, a 'clouty baall' made of rags wrapped around sheets of paper and tied with string, may not have been a regulation one but it served. As did the hard surface of the street that in the boys' minds was St James' Park.

In the football education system that was Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the next step was the 'playing fields'. Small boys watching from behind the goals would retrieve the wayward shots of the bigger boys. Sometimes the ball-retrievers were invited to join in.

One boy, big for his age, took up the offer and proved himself a gifted player. His name was Tom Whittaker. Born in Aldershot in 1898, his family moved to Newcastle when he was a youngster and he grew up every inch a Geordie. A technically minded student, Whittaker was offered a position in a Newcastle firm of marine engineers upon finishing school.

Whittaker was also offered a trial with Newcastle United Swifts, a team created during the First World War to provide a talent pool for Newcastle United. Playing outside right, he achieved every Geordie schoolboy's dream by playing and training at St James' Park.

Whittaker was called up for military service in 1918 and served as an army engineer. He was posted to Shoreham and while playing wing-half for the Brigade football team was noticed by a scout from Arsenal.

Still tossing up a career as an engineer, Whittaker, almost reluctantly, signed a professional contract with Arsenal in January 1920. He made his Arsenal debut at the close of the season in a 1-0 loss to West Bromwich Albion. Over the next five years he was in and out of the first team, notching up a total of 64 appearances.

In the 1924/25 season, Whittaker was in...