22/05/1945– 26/01/2026
Gordon 1963-73
167 1st Grade Games
200 plus Club Games
Represented Sydney
It is with great sadness that we have learned of the passing of one of Gordon Rugby’s Rex Batterham on 26 January 2026. Norm Tasker has penned the following tribute for Rex. Both his brother Rod and Rex’s wife were keen to ensure the Gordon family were aware of Rex’s passing.
“When Rex Batterham joined Gordon as a 17-year-old in 1963, it’s fair to say the times just didn’t suit him. For starters, in his first three years at the club, Gordon could hardly win a game. Then, when the tide turned under new coach Bevan Wilson, and Rex started to show true champion qualities as a scrum half,a representative career that would have been his at any other time struck a brick wall.
Randwick’s Ken Catchpole, still maybe the finest player Australia has produced, was the incumbent Test halfback. John Hipwell, a couple of years younger than Rex and not far behind Catchpole as a player, was Catchpole’s deputy. Rex got a few games with Sydney, but in another era would have claimed a lot more.
Rex Batterhamwas 80 when he died last month, felled by a massive heart attack as he surfed near his north coast home. He last played for Gordon in 1973 . . . 53 years ago. . . yet those who saw him will not forget him. History does not remember everybody, but it is hard to close the mind on the Batterham brothers, Rex and Rod, who dominated in a Gordon team that made three grand finals.
Rex played 167 first grade games with Gordon in the amateur era. He was a scrumhalf of the old style, lightning quick, possessed of a long and accurate pass that could find awide flyhalf in the days when backs did all the running and forwards stayed out of the way.
They were halcyon days. When Rex and his mates played Randwick at Chatswood in 1967, the crowd trying to get into the ground snaked out into Orchard Road. By the time they all made it into the ground, 6000-odd people watched in awe as Gordon beatup a Randwick team boasting no fewer than seven Wallabies. Gordon made the grand final that year, losing narrowly to a singularly brilliant Catchpole try.
Kent Gamble, who played on the wing in that famous Gordon side, recalled the Rex Batterham modus operandi thus:
“Rex was the trigger for an extraordinary backline . . . Dave Leckie, Terry Rigney, Warwick Moss, Ross Prowse and Rex’s brother Rod of course were all exceptional. But Rex was mercurial . . . could make a break from anywhere, and it was that skillthat got them all moving in an era when backplay was king.”
Rex Batterham was a focal point in one of the club’s most prosperous eras, and as such holds a special place in the Gordon story.
Rex is survivedby his wife Roz, son Cheyne and daughter Ana.”
“When you’ve worn the Gordon Tartan, you never walk alone”