Phillip Francis Hawthorne (24 October 1943 – 18 September 1994) was an Australian

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112 ...

and

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

footballer – a dual-code international. He represented the

Wallabies A wallaby () is a small or middle-sized macropod native to Australia and New Guinea, with introduced populations in New Zealand, Hawaii, the United Kingdom and other countries. They belong to the same taxonomic family as kangaroos and so ...

in twenty-one Tests and the

Kangaroos Kangaroos are four marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern gre ...

in three Tests. He captained Australia in rugby league the 3rd Test of the 1970 Ashes series. His mother was killed in a car accident in Newcastle when he was 14.

Rugby union career

Hawthorne was born in 1943 in Newcastle, New South Wales. From the Wanderers Rugby Union Club in Newcastle, he first represented for the Wallabies age 18 as

Fly-half In the game of rugby union, there are 15 players on each team, comprising eight forwards (wearing jerseys numbered 1–8) and seven backs (numbered 9–15). In addition, there may be up to eight replacement players "on the bench", numbered 16– ...

. For the next five years he was a consistent selection for Wallaby Tests and tours and formed a formidable partnership with scrum-half

Ken Catchpole Kenneth William Catchpole (21 June 1939 – 21 December 2017) was an Australian rugby union footballer. A state and national representative half-back, he played twenty-seven matches for Australia, thirteen as captain. Catchpole rose through t ...

. On the 1966–67 Tour of England Hawthorne played in 5 Tests and set a new tour point scoring record of 26 points (6 field goals, 2 penalties and 2 conversions). In 1967 he joined Randwick to pair with

Catchpole Catchpole is an uncommon surname, being a type of tax collector in medieval England. The name is a combination of Old English (cace-, catch) and medieval Latin (pullus, a chick). It derives from the image that people who owed tax were as difficult ...

at club level and he played further Tests that year.

Rugby league career

In 1968 Hawthorne accepted a then record $30,000 contract to switch to the professional code and join the

St. George Dragons The St. George Dragons is an Australian rugby league football club from St George District in Sydney, New South Wales that played in the top level New South Wales competition and Australian Rugby League competitions from the 1921 until th ...

. He played fifty-six games for the Dragons from 1968 to 1971 at

Five-eighth Five-eighth or Stand-off is one of the positions in a rugby league football team. Wearing jersey number 6, this player is one of the two half backs in a team, partnering the . Sometimes known as the pivot or second receiver, in a traditional a ...

before he joined

Eastern Suburbs Eastern Suburbs may refer to: Places *Eastern Suburbs (Mumbai), India *Eastern Suburbs (Sydney), Australia **Eastern Suburbs railway line, Sydney, Australia Sports clubs ;Association football *Eastern Suburbs AFC, Auckland, New Zealand * Eastern ...

for his final season in 1972. In 1969 he appeared as a guest player for

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

in a match against the

New Zealand national rugby league team The New Zealand national rugby league team (Māori: Tīma rīki motu Aotearoa) has represented New Zealand in rugby league since 1907. Administered by the New Zealand Rugby League, they are commonly known as the Kiwis, after the native bird of ...

to mark the

New Zealand Rugby League The New Zealand Rugby League (NZRL) is the governing body for the sport of rugby league football in New Zealand. SPARC, 2009: 13 The NZRL was founded on 25 April 1910 in preparation for a tour of Great Britain that same year.Coffey and Wood ''T ...

's diamond jubilee.Coffey, John and Bernie Wood ''Auckland, 100 years of rugby league, 1909-2009'', 2009. . p.p.207-208 Phil Hawthorne's international rugby league debut against Great Britain in Brisbane on 6 June 1970 alongside

John Brass John Brass (born 7 October 1946) is an Australian former rugby union and rugby league footballer - a dual-code international. He made twelve international representative rugby union appearances with the Wallabies from 1966 to 1968 and six rep ...

saw them together become Australia's 32nd and 33rd dual code rugby internationals. He played all three Tests against Great Britain in 1970 and was captain in the 3rd Test with Langlands and Sattler injured and unavailable. He is named on the Australian Players Register as Kangaroo No. 441.ARL Annual Report 2005, page 56 Injury restricted Hawthorne's appearances in 1971. He left the club at the end of that year to join the

Eastern Suburbs Roosters The Sydney Roosters are an Australian professional Rugby League Football Club based in the Eastern Suburbs (Sydney) and parts of inner Sydney. The club competes in the National Rugby League (NRL) competition. The Roosters have won fifteen ...

but spent much of the 1972 season in reserve grade behind the competition's eventual player of the year, his former Wallaby teammate John Ballesty. He moved to Coffs Harbour in 1973 and captain-coached a local side. He was diagnosed with

leukaemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ' ...

in 1991, and died in September 1994, at the age of 50.

Notable statistics

Hawthorne is remembered as a field-goal specialist with notable statistics including: * 6 field goals in 5 Test matches on the 66-67 Wallaby Tour * 18 field goals in 18 appearances with St George in 1968 * 12 field goals in 12 appearances with St George in 1969 * 3 field goals in his 3 Rugby League Tests in 1970.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hawthorne, Phil 1943 births 1994 deaths Auckland rugby league team players Australia international rugby union players Australia national rugby league team captains Australia national rugby league team players Australian rugby league players Australian rugby union players Dual-code rugby internationals People from the Hunter Region Rugby league players from Newcastle, New South Wales Rugby union players from Newcastle, New South Wales Hawthorne,Phil Sydney Roosters players Rugby union fly-halves