Ron Gordon – Australians urged him to jump ship, to play football for them

I was part of the ship’s first football team so whenever we pulled into port, we’d go off and play matches against other teams.

When we went down to Australia, so there I am, 19-year-old, down in Australia, just joined the Navy 12 months before, it was my dream you know? Visit Australia, playing against the top teams of Australia.

We played against the team that won the Australia Cup, we lost to them 3-1, and then we played against the top team La Trobe in Australia and beat them 1-0.

Then after that, every time we played a game, a family would adopt you and take you home for the weekend, so I spent, you know, a couple of weekends at home with Australian families and after one of them, the last one, a guy said to me, he said, “How do you like life here in Australia?” I said, “It’s lovely isn’t it, it’s brilliant. Completely different to what we’re used to.”

He said, “How do you fancy living here?” “Well,” I said, “it’s a long time away. I’ve got nine years to do.”

He said, “We can get you a job as an Electrician. All you’ve got to do is jump ship, and we’ll set you out an identity up.”

Simon: How could they do that? How did they do the …?

Well, you just went missing, and after the ship went away and then they would do some documents for you, but what made me … the common-sense part of me said no, because I remembered when we arrived in Brisbane, waiting on the side of the jetty were two guys who were with Policemen, and they’d jumped ship about four years previously and they gave themselves up because they had no future.

It was all very well while they were working for that company.

I forgot to explain the part was, we’ll get you a job, but you’ll play for our football team.