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By Mike C Ryan

 

The Greatest Boaster and Keith Miller

"I am the best athlete to come out of this country ever, in any sport."

Anthony Mundine, quoted by Melbourne sportswriter, Ron Reed. Boastful after beating up undersized Sam Soliman.

Reed sees Mundine as usual "full of himself," but Ron says Mundine as athlete "actually might have a case" for his boast.

Reed compares Ambrose Palmer unfavorably. Though Ambrose played Aussie Rules football for Footscray and was also heavyweight champion he was "never a world champion." Strike a light! Ambrose the middleweight was Triple champion, light-heavy and heavy as well. He took on Young Stribling who’d gone 14 ½ rounds for the Real World heavyweight title.

Mundine junior never steps up out of his 12 stone division. He only stepped down-weight, to bully Sam Soliman. Try stepping up to Paul Briggs at 12.7 light-heavyweight.

And if Ambrose Palmer as footballer boxer out-performed Mundine, reporter Reed overlooked an Aussie who outsoared them both. Mirror man Mundine wouldn’t know.

The all rounder excelsior was Keith Miller.

He was named Keith Ross Miller, after Ross and Keith Smith, the first men to fly England to Australia.

Young Miller in his first league football season was St Kilda best and fairest. He played Aussie Rules in the State sides of both Victoria and New South Wales, reports Roland Perry in an outstanding book, "Miller’s Luck, sub-titled Australia’s Greatest All-rounder.

The luck came large in Hitler’s war: Flying Officer Keith Miller flew plywood twin-engine Mosquitos through numerous close shaves from bullet and bomb.

Cricketer Keith Miller was one of the most spectacular ever to play the game.

Start with a personal memory. The present writer was a small boy in the Sydney grandstand. Miller lent down on one knee and belted a ball at a hundred miles an hour about fifteen feet high into the stand behind midwicket - straight at the Ryan brothers. We went under the bench in terror that still lives in me.

Mundine might scare the occasional taxi driver in the other corner. but has he ever hit so hard that spectators trembled?

Teenage batsman Keith Miller on debut for Victoria hit 181 not out. In seventeen summers "Nugget" Miller hit 33 centuries, including double-centuries (up to 281 n.o. against England).

He earned his Test place doubly, as a fast bowler, Lindwall and Miller were the forerunners of Lillee-Thomson. From his short run-up Miller’s frightening hurls bagged 466 first-class wickets, 170 in Tests, 87 of them against England.

So what was Mundine’s rugby league equivalent?

In eight years of major football (Dragons and Broncos) Mundine scored 52 tries.

He played only three games for New South Wales and scored one solitary try. The selectors were racist to leave him out of other representative occasions, whined Anthony.

Author Roland Perry can expect little challenge to dubbing K.R.Miller "Australia’s most dynamic and charismatic sporting hero."

Another book author, Peter FitzSimons in Great Australian Sports Champions, wrote that Keith Miller "inspired a generation, and not just in Australia. The Britons, Michael Parkinson and Prime Minister John Major. had him as their childhood heroes."

Miller was "famous for his devil-may-care attitude to the game and to life."

So where does that leave Anthony Mundine, who lost three of his four international tests (to Ottke, Siaca and Kessler) and edged Echols who never boxed a good bout since.

He’s pretended to be Muhammad Ali II since he started. No one remotely the equivalent of Frazier, Foreman, Norton or Bonavena has he yet faced.

But if he should reverse all direction and take on Calzaghe and Kessler (as speculated in Wikipedia) then Mundine can halt boast and let fists talk.