FOR MANY Filipino-Australians and rugby league supporters in Filipino involvement in “The Greatest Game Of All” began in March 1998, when utility-hooker Craig Wing stepped for the South Sydney Rabbitohs to play the Auckland Warriors in the National Rugby League (NRL) competition.
By ERICK ELEFANTE
Yet it was over a more than a decade before Wing’s first NRL appearance, in the 1984 NSW Rugby League season, that Filipino-mestizo Ben Gonzalez played 19 games for the Penrith Panthers and scored five tries for the season.
Gonzalez’s parents were Filipino-Spanish mestizos from Manila, where Ben was born. He played another three seasons with the Panthers in 1985 when he played 25 games and scored 11 tries, and again in 1986 and 1987, playing 73 games for a total of 23 tries.
Considering Ben’s performance for the Panthers over his four years playing there, it was not a surprise that when the new Gold Coast Rugby League franchise, Gold Coast-Tweed Giants, formed in 1988 Ben became one of the Giants’ recruits.
Between 1988 to 1991, Ben played on the wing 58 times for the Gold Coast and scored 12 tries.
In February 2005, with the Gold Coast Dolphins vying for a new NRL franchise, Ben’s 16-year-old son, Blayze Gonzales, who played lock for Tugun, in the Queensland’s southern division competition, was considered a key signing for this proposed new club, mirroring his father’s achievement with the earlier Gold Coast-Tweed Giants if the franchise came into being.
Fast- forward to January 18, 2014, Blayze, who now plays for the Tweed Heads Seagulls, was given the opportunity his father Ben never had because a Philippines national side was non-existent at the time: playing for the Philippine Airlines Tamaraws, Philippines’ National Rugby League (PNRL) International team against the Latin Heat.
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PICTURES:
TOP: Father and son, Blayze (left) and Ben Gonzalez (right).
MIDDLE: Ben Gonzalez playing for Penrith Panthers in mid 1980s.
BOTTOM: Blayze, left, on the boil in Queensland.
