Before there was Israel Folau and Karmichael Hunt, there was Ray Millington, Rooster No. 480, who sadly passed away last month, at the age of 93.
It is likely that Ray Millington was the first person to play all three sports of Aussie Rules, rugby union, and rugby league at the elite level. Raised in the country surrounds of Grose Wold – an 80-minute drive north-west of Sydney's centre, Ray Millington moved to Paddington as a 10-year-old in 1942. He played all sports growing up but it was in Australian Football where he excelled as a youngster.
Ray played with Eastern Suburbs Australian Rules club in Sydney, whose home ground of Trumper Park is where the Roosters played a number of first grade games at in 1915, 1934 and 1941. In 1949, at the age of 17, Ray was selected for a composite New South Wales team that played Williamstown, who had just won the VFA competition in Melbourne, and by 1952 had joined the Fitzroy club in Melbourne where he played two VFL (now AFL) games. He returned to Sydney in 1953 where he won a premiership with Eastern Suburbs.
By 1954 Ray had switched sports and was playing first grade rugby union with Randwick, with team mates such as Australian captain Sir Nicholas Shehadie and Johnny Morrison, father of future PM Scott Morrison. He played at the SCG for City Colts in 1954, after earlier playing Aussie Rules at the ground.
In 1957 Ray Millington changed codes for a third time, making the switch to rugby league at 25 years of age, 10 years after he last played the sport. Starting in the lower grades at the Roosters, Ray eventually made his first grade debut in Round 18 against Manly-Warringah at the Sydney Sports Ground as a late replacement for fullback and captain Tony Paskins. He would go on to play 18 first grade games in total between 1957 and 1959.
In 1959 he played 13 of the 18 games the Roosters played that year, after cementing down the first grade fullback spot, following Tony Paskins’ move to Manly-Warringah. One of those 1959 games was at the SCG against the St George Dragons, giving him a unique place in Australia’s sporting history of playing three sports at the famed Sydney Cricket Ground. His one and only first grade try came against Newtown in the Roosters Round 1 match that season at Henson Park.
Work commitments as a detective in the police force led to Ray transferring to Sydney’s western suburbs and his sporting career came to an end, but not before he made a mark on the Australian sporting landscape that would not be equalled for half a century.
The Sydney Roosters extend their heartfelt sympathies to the family and friends of Ray Millington at this sad time.
