The infamous rugby league feud of the late 1970s will be re-lived at the Sydney Football Stadium on Monday, August 3.
Wests Tigers have adopted the ‘Fibros v Silvertails theme as part of the promotional build-up to the blockbuster clash between Wests Tigers and the Manly Sea Eagles in round 21 of the Telstra Premiership.
A video package will be shown pre-game on the big screen, highlighting the famous battles between the ‘Fibros’ of Western Suburbs Magpies and the ‘Silvertails’ of Manly.
Former Wests coach and now respected league writer Roy Masters was the brain behind the now famous catch-cry between the two arch rivals.
In ‘Clouds of Dust, Buckets of Blood’ – the story of the Western Suburbs Rugby League Club – lies the story of how Masters was the psychologist.
“Wests’ theatre was the bloody playing fields where a class war, carefully orchestrated and nutured by Masters, took football violence to another level – and the game with it,’’ wrote author Gary Lester.
“For Masters, his battlefield had gone from classroom to dressing room – in many ways, another small step for mankind but a giant leap for Western Suburbs.
“He instigated the fibro class war with the Manly Warringah Silvertails of the North Shore as a means to the end.
“Masters, the psychologist, saw it as the best way of motivating Wests to a premiership.
“It left league with some of the bloodiest, toughest, and sometimes tasteless, matches in its history.
“Long forgotten by many, though, is that it almost brought Wests a premiership.’’
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