Name Dick Thornett | ||
 | ||
Died October 12, 2011, Sydney, Australia | ||
Richard Norman “Dick” Thornett (23 September 1940 – 12 October 2011) was one of five Australians to have represented their country in three sports. He was an Olympic water polo player before becoming a rugby league and rugby union player—a dual code international representative.
Contents
Olympian
Thornett also represented Australia at Water polo at age 20 in the 1960 Rome Olympics giving him the truly rare sporting distinction of being a triple international (see also Michael Cleary).
Rugby union
A Randwick DRUFC forward, in his two senior seasons in rugby union in 1961 and 1962 Thornett made eleven national representative Tests appearances for the Wallabies. On the Wallabies 1961 tour of South Africa Thornett was in the squad with his brother John Thornett and they played Test matches together. Dick left the amateur code after two years to join his brother Ken Thornett at the Parramatta Eels.
Rugby league
Thornett was a second-rower, and joined his brother Ken at the Parramatta Eels in 1963. He played there until 1971, making 168 appearances for the club, being a master ball player informing the style-changing ball skills that Arthur Beetson would bring to forward play shortly after Thornett. In a club game against Canterbury in 1968 Thornett matched the then standing club record of four tries in a match.
In 1969 he appeared as a guest player for Auckland in a match against the New Zealand Kiwis to mark the New Zealand Rugby League’s diamond jubilee.
He made national representative appearances for the Kangaroos in Tests against South Africa in 1963, on the 1963–64 Kangaroo tour and in three matches of the 1968 World Cup.
His international rugby league debut in the First Test against South Africa in Brisbane on 20 July 1963 saw Thornett become Australia’s 28th dual code rugby international, following Michael Cleary and preceding Jim Lisle. Ken Thornett also appeared in that Test match, making the brothers the first to play together in an Australian test side since Bill and Viv Farnsworth in 1912.
Thornett’s final two club seasons at Parramatta were affected by a bout of hepatitis and he saw out the final year of his career with a season at Easts.
While playing rugby, Thornett also served in the New South Wales Police Force and in 2008, rugby league's centennial year in Australia, he was named as a reserve in a NSW Police team of the century.
Sporting brothers
Thornett was born into a family of legendary footballing brothers. John Thornett was an acclaimed Wallaby captain who played 37 Rugby Union Tests for Australia over a distinguished 13-year career from 1955. Ken Thornett was the leading Australian rugby league fullback in the early sixties. Ken earned 12 Test caps for Australia and played alongside Dick at Parramatta over a 136-game club career.
John and Dick Thornett both played together in Wallabies sides in 1961–62; Dick and Ken Thornett played together in three test matches on the 1963–64 Kangaroo Tour.