Rugby League
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Video - Gillespie tackling Brisbane Broncos Terry Matterson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60el2NNXda0

Stats -

You want tough?...Try playing first grade footy for 10 years with only 9 fingers! Cement missed the '86 Roo tour when he famously lost his thumb in an accident at his day job, when it became stuck in the crushing mechanism of the garbage truck he was working on.

Didn't take even 1% of his ferocity and effectiveness away when he returned the next year though - hard as bloody nails he was!...The way he could just stop a sprinting opposition frontrower in his tracks - sit them directly on their backsides and shake their fillings loose - and yet not even BUDGE an inch backwards himself was just awesome!

We should never have let him go to Wests and the sight of him in a Manly jersey made me SICK to the pit of my stomach!

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Marty Bella takes the ball from the tap at full tilt in an origin game (circa late eighties). 110 odd kg of "soft" muscle barrelling down the field, ten in from touch at a good 25k per hour.

In his way, the man they called cement.

As the cockroach defence jostled for position, cement set himself (pardon the pun). As Bella decended on him, Gillespie launched.

End of story. I have seen many an enormous tackle in my day, but this was the only one ever to defy the laws of physics

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Story I heard about 'Cement' from someone who played lower grades at Canterbury.

Cement injured his hand somehow, and the doctors put a pin and a brace, and a whole mess of stitches into it. So he misses a couple of weeks, but comes back to start.

The referee, doing the rounds of the dressing rooms to check for boots, etc, glances at Cement's taped hand and informs the Canterbury medical staff that it just won't do to have a player running 'round with a couple of centimeters of metal sticking out of the dressing. The medicos are thinking that Cement's a scratch.

But no. Cement finds himself a pair of pliers, and proceeds to PULL THE PIN OUT OF HIS OWN HAND. He gets a shot of antibiotic, they tape over it, and he plays.

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I think David was playing for Hunslet at the time,coached by ex-GB hooker David Ward.

I met him a few times in the Rock pub in nearby Morley,on Sunday evenings after the game.

A nice guy,really friendly.

Would'nt like to meet him on a rugby field however !!

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I probably know cement a little better than most , we grew up 2gether in a country town called narromine.

I remember we played centre together on game in a trial match against cobar , was the yr after he played aussie schoolboys. well , on the bus trip 2 cobar , we decided to have a few handburgers, ran on the field , the bastards from cobar were huge , he couldnt catch a football 2 save himself then , and i was all of 65 kilos , well , we got flogged.

Another time , he came and saw me with a few players from canterbury when i was in hospital , he was shitting bricks , wayne peirce was blowing up about footballers wearing ice hockey pads(shoulder pads), and silly cement had left his in the dressing room ,that day , the pads were retrieved , and the boys denied all.

More than a great footballer , a great bloke , always looked after his mates from the bush no matter how bright his star shined

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I remember reading a great piece about Gillespie from Paul Langmack.

In those days, the Lock played behind the line and directed the defenders on where to be.

Langmack said he used to just watch runners coming at them and get great joy and laughter from just screaming "Smash Him Cement, Smash Him Cement" and watching the carnage that followed.

What a hitter.

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