Kevin Junee
| Personal information | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Born | Sydney, New South Wales, Australia | |||||
| Playing information | ||||||
| Position | Halfback | |||||
| Club | ||||||
| Years | Team | Pld | T | G | FG | P |
| 1964–73 | Eastern Suburbs | 165 | 62 | 0 | 1 | 188 |
| 1974–75 | Manly-Warringah | 38 | 29 | 0 | 0 | 87 |
| 1976 | Eastern Suburbs | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 204 | 91 | 0 | 1 | 275 | |
| Representative | ||||||
| Years | Team | Pld | T | G | FG | P |
| 1965–68 | New South Wales | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 9 |
| 1967–68 | Australia | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Source: Yesterday's Hero | ||||||
Kevin Junee is an Australian former rugby league footballer of the 1960s and 1970s. An Australian international and New South Wales interstate representative back, he played his club football in the New South Wales Rugby Football League premiership for Sydney teams Eastern Suburbs and Manly-Warringah.
Kevin is the father of Australian dual code rugby league and rugby union player Darren Junee who also played rugby league for the Eastern Suburbs club between 1995-1998.
Junee played all his junior football with Eastern Suburbs, breaking into the top grade in 1964 - the bleakest period in the club's history, winning just 2 matches that year and just 3 more in the following two. However this didn’t stop Junee from breaking into the representative scene. In 1965, the speedy halfback was chosen for New South Wales and in 1967 was first selected to play for his country on a Kangaroo Tour, becoming Kangaroo No. 422.[1] In the 1970 NSWRFL season Junee was awarded the Rothmans Medal – rugby league's leading player award presented annually to the year's best player.[2] Premiership success was one of the few things that eluded Junee throughout his career. The closest he came was in 1972 when he was a member of the Eastern Suburbs side that was defeated by Manly Warringah in that year's Grand Final - 19 points to 14.
The international halfback left Easts to join Manly in 1974 after a player swap brought his former halfback rival at Easts, Johnny Mayes back to the club. Ironically, that year Eastern Suburbs won their first premiership since 1945 and won again in 1975, losing only three games all season. To rub salt into these wounds, Mayes had just won a premiership with Manly in 1973 and was part of these two premiership winning sides. While playing for the Manly-Warringah club during the 1974 NSWRFL season Junee topped the season's try-scoring list with 23 tries, a club record at the time.
Junee returned to Easts for his final season in 1976, displacing Mayes at halfback before the emergence of an up-and-coming Kevin Hastings. Junee, who played 159 matches for Eastern Suburbs has been made a life member of that club. Junee went on to run a sports store in Bondi Junction, New South Wales for many years.[3]
References
- ↑ australianrugbyleague.com.au. "Player Register". Kangaroos. ARL. Retrieved 12 November 2011.
- ↑ Alan Whitiker, The Encyclopedia of Rugby League Players
- ↑ http://www.rugbyleagueproject.org