Rugby league friendships endure in a way men working on an assembly line, or in an office, or even down a mine do not understand.

Perhaps it's the shared cameraderie of physical and mental pain, or the mutual understanding that win and loss are often the result of forces beyond our control - a referee's whim, a wicked bounce, a gust of wind, even a fresh coat of paint on a cross bar.

Ron Massey was in the kitchen with Jack's wife Judy when Jack walked down the stairs, taking careful steps, as a man might take slow, measured sips of a long glass of water. It was clear physical and mental discomfort followed him everywhere, like another man's shadow. Although immaculately dressed, as always, he had lost weight.

At the height of his power and influence in the game in the '70's, Gibson was always imperious, sometimes impassive and, to some, impenetrable.

He brought to mind Shakespeare's words in Julius Caesar:

He doth bestride the narrow worldHe was a man close enough for people to shake his hand but rarely close enough for anyone to sling an arm around him. But on this day, he looked frail and vulnerable, as if he acknowledged he needed family and friends to invade his personal space. His voice was soft, almost gentle.

Like a Colossus; and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs, and peep about.

I had been warned he would not remember me but when he called me "brother" and later, "Roy", an enormous wave of pride and relief washed over me.

After all, I'd seen him at a Team of the Seventies function at the Opera House months earlier. He seemed deaf to the best of wishes. At reunions, the participants tend to revert to their old pecking order, no matter where the years have taken them.

Jack was top of the order, and it was through him we summoned our dormant memories. Yet, paradoxically, we couldn't be sure he knew us.

However, on this Friday morning at his Cronulla home, he was, according to Massey, having "his best day".

We first sat down on the balcony overlooking the inground pool on a lower deck but it was too sunny and we moved inside to the comfortable lounge chairs, adjacent the huge oil painting of Jack, which captures the authority that summoned so much respect.

The painting is so good, you can't understand why it didn't win the Archibald prize but, as Massey explained, it was done from a photograph.

Nearby is his desk from which he wrote letters in a copperplate style the envy of a royal calligrapher. In fact, handwriting is both a family trait and a point of pride. While talking to Jack, an amateur genealogist called by, a woman interested in tracing the Gibson family tree. I mentioned Jack had once told me the story of his father, who fought in the Boer War, writing a letter while in camp in South Africa. The orderly sergeant remarked how the handwriting resembled that of a soldier, by the same name, in the next tent. It was his own brother, Jack's uncle.

The brother had left Australia to chase the American gold rush and enlisted from California.

The Boer War discussion ignited something in Jack's memory, as if order and logic surged in where disconnected memories once pooled. He nodded knowingly, looking almost relieved, like someone who had solved his own private equation.

This is an edited extract from Bad Boys by Roy Masters.

THE GIBSON YEARS

The coach

Clubs: Easts 1967-68, 1974-76, St George 1970-71, Newtown 1973, Souths 1978-79, Parramatta 1981-83, Cronulla 1985-87. Rep: NSW 1989-90. Premierships: 5 (Easts 1974-75, Parramatta 1981-82-83).

The player

Clubs: Easts, Newtown, Western Suburbs.

162 first-grade games (front-rower).

Rep: NSW 1954 (1).