“I was at Manly in 1982; I was a non-drinker, but I still went to the Brookvale Rex Hotel for Mad Monday after we lost that year’s grand final to Parramatta,” Eden (pictured far right at the top of this post) recalls for Inside Sport. “I remember ringing the Manly boss Ken Arthurson. His secretary Barbara, who is now his wife, answered the phone. I said, ‘Look, the Roosters have offered me a great deal, but they’ve only given me till four o'clock this afternoon to agree. What can you do?’

“Barbara said, ‘Hold them off; Ken’s over at the Cricket Ground with the Kangaroo team.’ Manly eventually told me they weren’t going to be able to go anywhere near what they were offering over at the Roosters, but that they’d still love me to stay. I just said, ‘Look, you've offered me three grand, the Roosters have offered me 25 … I’m newly married and got a kid on the way … a university wage, help me out here.’ So I signed with the Roosters.

“I think I remember playing my first game for them at fullback, against Wests … went alright. The Roosters’ coach at the time, Laurie Freier, put me in at five-eighth for the next game against Cronulla. I went okay and stayed at five-eighth. It was a struggle, though. Alan Neil and myself were the halves. Kevin Hastings was the incumbent and had to move to lock.

“Coach Bob Fulton had left the Roosters the previous year and took a whole lot of players with him. We didn’t have a great year in ’83, but it was okay … Not everyone was playing for the same reasons, for the coach or for the team, so it was tough. I was driving over from Manly each day for training, and so I wasn’t part of the eastern suburbs culture, if you like, but I really enjoyed my football. There were a lot of new blokes in the team but we were still doing very well.”

Eden, a lethally accurate goalkicker throughout his career, won the game’s ultimate individual prize, the Rothmans Medal, in 1983. (The Rothmans, in existence since 1968, was replaced by the Dally M Medal as the sole individual award from season 1998 upon formation of the National Rugby League.) Eden’s Roosters finished sixth at the end of the ‘83 home and away season, going down to the Dragons in a play-off for fifth 44-16 at the SCG ahead of the semi-finals.

(Top image supplied by Mike Eden)