Les Johns

Like Clive Churchill, Les Johns began his football career in Newcastle. Also like Churchill, Johns could kick goals, tackle and run like a greyhound. And like the Little Master he was rarely less than dynamic, a match-winner in a small economy-sized package who came south to try his luck in the big league and stayed to build a wonderful career.

When, in 2006, a selection panel rich in experience sat down in Sydney to pick the ''team of the '60s'', Johns was fullback, an extraordinary tribute considering the quality of his contemporaries at fullback: Keith Barnes, Ken Thornett and Graeme Langlands.

The blonde-haired Johns made his early mark in football with a dazzling display for Newcastle against Great Britain in 1962, a match won famously by the home side. He was in Sydney by 1963, signed by Canterbury, the start of a richly successful nine-year partnership.

Arguably Johns' most spectacular moment came in 1966 when he felled Balmain's flying Kevin Yow Yeh at the Sydney Sports Ground with one of the greatest cover tackles ever made by a fullback.

The 1967–68 Kangaroo tour was probably his masterpiece. Journalists who accompanied the team, such as EE Christensen, Mike Gibson and Alan Clarkson, offered rave reviews about his unorthodoxy and brilliant attacking skills when the team came home.