Talkin Sport - Manfred Moore will be returning to Sydney

The Newtown Rugby League Football Club is pleased to announce that Manfred Moore will be the special guest of the club at a function to be held at the Bowlers’ Club of NSW (95 York Street, Sydney) on the evening of Thursday, 23rd August 2007.

Manfred will also be attending the Newtown Jets annual players and supporters reunion at Henson Park on the afternoon of Saturday, 25th August. He will then attend Sunday morning Church service on the 26th August, to be conducted by the Newtown Jets club chaplain Father Dave Smith of the Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Herbert Street, Dulwich Hill.

Manfred is well remembered as the high-profile American professional footballer who joined the Newtown Jets for several matches in the 1977 NSW Rugby League premiership competition. His recruitment was an audacious if not entirely successful venture, but both Manfred and the Jets have remained in contact with each other – and now he’s coming back, for what will be his first visit to Sydney in thirty years. What amazing changes there have been to this great city and the game of Rugby League football in that time!

Manfred was both a graduate in Business Studies and an outstanding college athlete at the University of Southern California in the early 1970’s, and then embarked on a professional football career with the Oakland Raiders, San Francisco 49ers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Minnesota Vikings franchises. He was with the Oakland Raiders when they won Super Bowl XI in January 1977 – and only a few months later he was turning out for the Jets at Henson Park! He is now a successful Los Angeles businessman and a lay preacher in a neighbourhood Church.

He has expressed great enthusiasm in renewing acquaintances with some of his Newtown Jets compadres from 1977 – identities such as John Singleton (now the Newtown Jets official club patron); his former coach Paul Broughton (now the chairman of the Gold Coast Titans); former Jets secretary Frank Farrington, and players John Floyd, Paul Dawson, Col Casey, Jets international Phil Sigsworth and Colin Murphy.