- ORANGE'S BEST 17: Check out the side put together of the best juniors from the colour city
James Maloney, Orange's best rugby league player? Our Goat, if you will.
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The two-time premiership winner is up there, rugby league author Nick Tedeschi says. Perhaps even right at the top.
Tedeschi, alongside one of the city's genuine sporting gurus Michael Croke, has put together Orange's best 17 - a compilation of the best players who've used junior football with St Joseph's Sheahan, now CYMS, Bloomfield or under 18s with either CYMS or Hawks to springboard elite rugby league careers.
It's a crack side. And both Tedeschi and Croke believe Maloney is the best of the lot.
"Britt, Dunn, Bob Lindfield ... but Maloney makes a compelling case. He's won multiple premierships, played 300 games, played for Australia and NSW; he won everywhere he went. And he's been great for the game here. Orange always gets a mention when Maloney's up," Tedeschi said.
... you'd struggle to go past Maloney as the best.
- Nick Tedeschi
"If you sat down and that side took the field, in fantasy land," Croke chimes in.
"... you'd put money on Maloney being man of the match."
Tedeschi agreed: "There's some fair captains on that list, and Britt probably captains the side, but you'd struggle to go past Maloney as the best."
Maloney's recent retirement from the game spurred on the selection of this side: Orange's best 17.
The 35-year-old will hang up the boots after this season, one in which he's guiding the Catalans Dragons in the English Super League.
And the Dragons are winning there too. Through 19 games in 2021, Catalans have won 17. It'd take a brave man to bet against Maloney, who started his junior career with SJS while his old man Brian was captain-coach of CYMS in the '90s, winning another title.
In fact, Maloney is one of six players who played junior footy in Orange who've gone on to win a premiership.
Those titles span 91 seasons, too, from Bob Lindfield in 1930 to Jesse Bromwich in 2020. Dunn, Mortimer and Britt are the others.
While Dunn (1988) and Jack Wighton (2019) are the only two players who've started out in Orange to go on and win a Clive Churchill Medal, the latter doing so in a losing side. Wighton is the only Dally M Medal winner from the city.
There's a thong of internationals, too, and looking back and making note of some of the incredible feats of the city's best players was a task both Tedeschi and Croke felt was "important" to do.
"Nick and I had a coffee and between us, without blowing our own trumpets, we've probably written half a dozen books on rugby league, picked 50 or 60 teams; best St George, best Canberra ... but never picked a best Orange team," Croke said.
"The key is the criteria - they have to have played junior rugby league in Orange."
And it's a line in the sand that ruled out a few notables.
Chris McKivat is arguably the greatest player from Orange, but he wasn't considered because rugby league was not played in Australia during his formative years.
"We didn't realise with that criteria how touch and go it would be for a few players," Tedeschi added.
Just two of the 17 names didn't play any of their rugby league in Sydney.
Tom Commins was a star for CYMS in the 1950s, a genuine flier on the wing and a central figure in the green and golds' dominance of Group 10 in the 1950s.
While Bob Priest, named at fullback by Tedeschi and Croke, captained NSW Country and represented Western Division and Riverina and Groups 9, 10 and 20 and, the pair say, is acknowledged as one of the greatest footballers Orange has produced.
Both old-school bush footballers ... but as good as Maloney?
"Comparing eras is always tough," Croke smiles.
"This side is incredibly different to other sides of similar ilk picked in the past, but this is the best players who've gone on from here to play the game."
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