Name Les Cubitt | ||
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Died November 10, 1968, Katoomba, Australia | ||
Les Cubitt (1892 –1968) was an Australian representative rugby league player, a Centre or Five-eighth whose club career was with Eastern Suburbs and the Glebe Dirty Reds. He is considered one of the nation's finest footballers of the 20th century.
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Club career
Cubitt commenced his club career at just eighteen years of age with Glebe playing alongside his brother Charlie Cubitt (1891-1968) in the 1911 Grand Final loss to Eastern Suburbs. In 1913 Les Cubitt joined the Roosters where he played for the next nine seasons winning a premiership in 1913.
Representative career
He was first selected for New South Wales in 1911 but had to wait until the end of the First World War to make his national representative debut. He played in the centres in all four Tests of Australia's first tour of New Zealand in 1919 scoring four tries in the tests and 17 tries in the last three tour matches. He is listed on the Australian Players Register as Kangaroo No. 95.
He was selected as captain of the 1921-22 "Australasian" Kangaroos which had two New Zealanders in the squad. He concealed a serious knee injury which he aggravated on the tour in England and which led to his eventual retirement in 1922.
Accolades
In February 2008, Cubitt was named in the list of Australia's 100 Greatest Players (1908–2007) which was commissioned by the NRL and ARL to celebrate the code's centenary year in Australia.