SCG Life Members

Graham Arnold was one of the Socceroos’ most prolific strikers of the 1980s and ’90s, earning 56 full international caps, scoring 19 goals and wearing the captain’s armband on five occasions. He was part of three World Cup qualifying campaigns, including the famous game against Diego Maradona’s Argentina at the Sydney Football Stadium in 1993. At club level, Arnold made 453 appearances and scored 161 goals in Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan. 

Arnold turned to coaching in 2000, serving several stints as a deputy for Socceroos. He became permanent head coach in 2018 and, four years later, steered the Socceroos into the last 16 at the World Cup finals in Qatar. Australia were knocked out by eventual champions Argentina and Arnold was named the World Cup’s best manager by the respected French magazine L’Équipe. At club level, he claimed the A-League title with Central Coast Mariners in 2012–13 and with Sydney FC in 2016–17, both triumphs being achieved in grand finals at Allianz Stadium. He is a three-time A-League Coach of the Year. 

Known to all as ‘Arko’ and also affectionately as ‘The Godfather of Manly’ following a playing, coaching and administrative career dedicated to the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles, Ken Arthurson was a hugely influential figure in rugby league for more than 50 years. He was a gifted footballer but his career was cut short by injury at age 23 after playing for Manly against Souths in the 1951 grand final at the Sports Ground. Arthurson switched to coaching, guiding Manly to grand finals in 1957 and 1959 before becoming rugby league’s full-time secretary at Manly in 1964. 

Under Arthurson, the Sea Eagles won its first four first-grade premierships (1972, 1973, 1976 and 1978) before he left Brookvale in 1983 to become Executive Chairman of the Australian Rugby League and president of the NSWRL three years later. With CEO John Quayle, he formed one of Australian sport’s most effective administrative partnerships, their tenure highlighted by the NSWRL premiership’s expansion beyond Sydney and the game’s partnership with Tina Turner. He is a former Trustee of the SCG. 

David Campese was one of the most recognisable names in world rugby from the day in August 1982 when he scored a try on his Test debut against New Zealand in Christchurch to his 101st and final Test at Cardiff Arms Park in December 1996. A winger or fullback, Campese was the first Wallaby to appear in 100 Tests, scoring a then world record and still Australian record 64 tries. 

He was a member of Australia’s first three World Cup campaigns (1987–1995), dazzling in Britain and Ireland in 1991 when he scored six tries in six matches. Campese’s most prolific day as a tryscorer for the Wallabies was at the SCG on 9 July 1983, when he bagged four tries in a 49–3 defeat of the USA. 

More than any other champion since Dally Messenger, Campese was acknowledged as a ‘rugby genius’, his risk-taking, rare acceleration, famous ‘goosestep’ and penchant for creating tries from anywhere drawing thousands through the gate during a golden era for the code in Australia. 

‘There can’t be anybody who has had a greater impact on women’s cricket than Belinda Clark,’ Greg Chappell said in 2014. An opening batter, Clark scored 104 and 13 on her Test debut, against India in 1991. Six years later, she became the first cricketer to make an ODI double century, hitting 229 not out from 155 deliveries against Denmark during the women’s World Cup in India. It would be more than 12 years before another batter, female or male, would match her feat, when Sachin Tendulkar scored 200 not out for India against South Africa. 

Clark was Australian captain from 1993 to 2005, leading her country at three World Cups (a feat later matched by Ricky Ponting in men’s cricket). In 2014, she was the first woman inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame and she is also honoured with a sculpture at the SCG. 

Richard Colless is a giant of Australian sports administration. His record highlighted by his remarkable tenure at the Sydney Swans after joining the board and being named club chairman in 1993. He continued in that role until the end of the 2013 season. Under his leadership, the Swans became a powerhouse on and off the field, after being on the brink of insolvency following several years of financial struggles, poor team results and small crowds. Famous names such as Ron Barassi, Tony Lockett, Paul Roos and Barry Hall were lured north. Paul Kelly (1995) and Adam Goodes (2003 and 2006) won the Brownlow Medal. The Swans were beaten in the grand final in 1996 and 2006, and won the flag in 2005 — the club’s first premiership in 72 years — and 2012. 

His passion for the club and reverence for its history going back to the birth of South Melbourne in 1874 saw the introduction of the Swans’ Hall of Fame in 2009 and the creation of the Swans’ Heritage List in 2011. 

Glenn McGrath’s 14-year international career finished in January 2007 at the Sydney Cricket Ground in a race for the final wicket of an Ashes whitewash. McGrath and Shane Warne were bowling to English tailenders Steve Harmison and James Anderson. McGrath won, dismissing Anderson to make it three wickets in the innings, six for the match, 21 for the series and 563 during a peerless 124-Test career. The Australians secured a 5–0 series win, and McGrath, Warne and Justin Langer retired together at the top of their sport. For McGrath and the Sydney Cricket Ground, it was just the start. 

In 2009 the McGrath Foundation and the former SCG Trust partnered to establish the first Jane McGrath Day, which today has grown into the Pink Test. McGrath’s individual honours include being named one of Wisden’s Cricketers of the Year for 1997, winning the 2000 Allan Border Medal, and being inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2011 and the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2013. But his greatest contribution may well be with the foundation that carries his family’s legacy as it continues to help thousands of Australian families. 

Michael O’Loughlin was the first player in Sydney Swans/South Melbourne history to play 300 AFL games. Only Bob Pratt (681 goals from 1930 to 1946) kicked more goals for the ‘Bloods’ than O’Loughlin’s 521 goals from 1995 to 2009. He joined the club in the final season of Ron Barassi’s time as coach, one of a group of gifted young footballers who combined with established stars such as captain Paul Kelly, Paul Roos and Tony Lockett. 

In his second season, he played in the AFL grand final, when the Swans were beaten by North Melbourne. In 2005, O’Loughlin was a member of the Swans’ 72-year drought-breaking premiership team in the same season he was chosen in the AFL Indigenous Team of the Century. 

O’Loughlin received All Australian honours in 1997 and again in 2000. His 303rd and final AFL appearance came at the SCG on 29 August 2009, after which he was inducted into the Swans Hall of Fame in 2011 and the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 2015. His contribution post-football continues, mentoring Indigenous talent at the Australian Institute of Sport and partnering with close friend Adam Goodes to establish the GO Foundation. 

When Eastern Suburbs ran onto the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1976 for the inaugural World Club Challenge, their jerseys were emblazoned with ‘City Ford’. It was the first time a sponsor’s name had appeared on a club jumper. The man behind that innovation, Nick Politis, has been as influential in rugby league as any of the Easts superstars of that era, Arthur Beetson, Ron Coote and Jack Gibson included. Easts defeated St Helens that day and with the City Ford sponsorship, Easts and rugby league secured the service and loyalty of one of the most significant off-field contributors in the game’s history. In 2023, Politis clocked up 30 years as the chairman of the Sydney Roosters and Easts Group. Under his leadership, the Roosters have won four NRL premierships, one NRLW premiership and four World Club Challenges. 

In business, the Nick Politis story is remarkable. He arrived in Australia as an eight-year-old, his family having fled from the Greek island of Kythera. Today, Politis is one of the most powerful figures in rugby league, the most influential person in the Australian car industry, a friend and mentor to many and an incredibly generous philanthropist. 

Born and raised in Newcastle NSW, Cheryl Salisbury was captain of the Australian women’s football team for seven years and made 151 appearances at the elite level, making her the most-capped Australian player of either gender until current Matilda Clare Polkinghorne’s 152nd cap in February 2023. Salisbury scored 38 goals during her national team career, including a goal on debut as a 20-year-old in 1994 against Russia and Australia’s first goal in women’s football at an Olympic Games when she scored against Sweden at the SFS on 16 September 2000. She also scored in her final international appearance, from the penalty spot in a 2–2 draw with Italy in 2009. 

Salisbury played club football in Australia, America and Japan, and represented Australia at four FIFA Women’s World Cups (1995, 1999, 2003 and 2007), two Olympic Games (2000 and 2004) and two AFC Women’s Asian Cups (2006 and 2008). 

In 2012, she was named Australia’s greatest female player by the Johnny Warren Football Foundation and five years later she was the first woman to be awarded the Alex Tobin Medal. 

Irene and Alf Sellers and their sons, Basil and Rex, came to Australia from India in the late 1940s, to forge an extraordinary success story. They landed in Adelaide, from where Rex, a leg-spinner, earned a place in Australia’s Ashes touring team of 1964 and is now a life member of the South Australian Cricket Association. Basil became a giant of the Australian business world, a renowned philanthropist, and a keen and generous backer of sport. 

Basil instigated the Basil Sellers Sports Sculptures Project at the SCG precinct in 2008, when Richie Benaud was unveiled at the back of the Ladies Pavilion, the first of a series of sports legends cast in bronze around the precinct. He financed a similar venture at the Adelaide Oval. His support for the Sydney Swans has helped that AFL club become a model for other sporting organisations, and the former Swans training and administration centre at the SCG was named in his honour. Basil served as a director of Cricket NSW from 1984 to 1987, became a life member in 2009, and in 2022 was named a Vice Patron. 

Mark Taylor’s Test career started and finished at the Sydney Cricket Ground almost a decade apart. During that time, with his classically late shot-making and peerless captaincy, the left-handed opener helped Australia establish its position at the very top of world cricket. Taylor made his international debut during the summer of 1988–89. When Taylor got to England later that year, he made his first Test century and then with his second, became the first Australian to score a Test double century in an Ashes Test since Keith Stackpole in 1970–71 and the first in England since Bob Simpson in 1964. Taylor’s 839 runs aggregate for that series remains the third highest on record, behind Sir Donald Bradman’s 974 in 1930 and Wally Hammond’s 905 in 1928–29. Taylor captained Australia in 50 of his 104 Tests, leading his side to a series win against the West Indies in the Caribbean in 1995, the first time the West Indies had been beaten at home in 15 years, and to the 1996 World Cup final. 

In his farewell Test at his home ground at the start of 1999, Taylor led Australia to a 3–1 series win against England, his third Ashes series win as captain. Soon after, he was named Australian of the Year. He shifted to the commentary box with ease and served as a director of Cricket Australia from 2004 to 2018. 

Steve Waugh’s life in international cricket was almost unprecedented in terms of the way it combined durability with excellence and triumph for almost two decades. His career was not quite one of total, sustained success — he took three and a half years to score his first Test century and was dropped for 18 months in 1991-1992 — but he evolved from these setbacks to become arguably the toughest, most mentally strong cricketer of his generation. He appeared in 86 Test-match victories, becoming the first skipper to lead his country to 40 Test wins. He was part of three famous triumphs — the 1987 World Cup and Test series wins in England in 1989 and the West Indies in 1995 — and led his country to further glory at the 1999 World Cup and in the Ashes Tests of 2001 and 2002-03. 

Waugh scored 10,927 runs in Tests, 24,052 in first-class matches and 7569 one-day internationals. As a medium-pace bowler, he took 92 Test, 195 ODI and 249 first-class wickets, earning the nickname the ‘Iceman’ for his nerveless overs at the end of exciting limited-over matches. He built a strong affinity with his home ground, the SCG, scoring three Test centuries, the most famous was his classic knock against England on 3 January 2003, when he hit off-spinner Richard Dawson to the cover boundary off the last ball of the day to reach his ton.