Greg Growden Explained

Greg Growden (1959/1960 – 14 November 2020) was an Australian sports journalist, author and biographer.

Life

Growden was born in Adelaide, the son of Port Adelaide Football Club player Kevin Growden.^[1] The family moved to a rice farm at Coleambally in the Riverina where Growden spent his teenage years.^[2]

He joined the Sydney Morning Herald in early 1978 soon after leaving school.^[3] He was chief rugby union correspondent for the paper from 1987 to 2012, and was the Australian rugby union correspondent for ESPN from 2012 to 2018.^[4] He is one of just two international rugby writers to cover all of the first eight World Cups.^[5]

Growden died of cancer on 14 November 2020, aged 60.^{[6] [7] [8]}

Books

• The Wallabies' World Cup! (1991, with Spiro Zavos, Simon Poidevin and Evan Whitton)
• A Wayward Genius: The Fleetwood-Smith Story (1991)
• With the Wallabies (1995)
• Gold, Mud and Guts: The Incredible Tom Richards – Footballer, War Hero, Olympian (2001)
• Rugby Union for Dummies (2003, 2011)
• The Snowy Baker Story (2003)
• My Sporting Hero (2004, editor)
• It's Not Just a Bloody Game! Timeless Rugby Union Stories (2007)
• Jack Fingleton

The Man Who Stood Up to Bradman (2008)

• Inside the Wallabies: The Real Story – the Players, the Politics, the Games from 1908 to Today (2010)
• More Important than Life or Death: Inside the Best of Australian Sport (2013, co-editor with Peter FitzSimons)
• Wallaby Warrior: The World War I War Diaries of Tom Richards, Australia's only British Lion (2013, editor)
• Bowled by a Bullet: The Tragic Life of Claude Tozer (2015)
• The Wrong 'Un: The Brad Hogg Story (2016, with Brad Hogg)
• The Wallabies at War (2018)
• Major Thomas

The Bush Lawyer Who Defended Breaker Morant and Took On the British Empire (2019)

• Cricketers at War (2019)

Notes and References

1. News: Growden . Greg . Son of a Ports gun: Greg Growden's life as a bush footy player . 16 November 2020 . ABC News. 7 March 2016.
2. News: Growden . Greg . Lawn bowls is best thing since man discovered the ball . 16 November 2020 . Sydney Morning Herald . 24 May 2008.
3. Web site: Greg Growden . Cameron's. 10 December 2019.
4. Greg Growden, Cricketers at War, ABC Books, Sydney, 2019, p. i.
5. Web site: Greg Growden . HarperCollins. 10 December 2019.
6. Web site: Untitled. Very sorry to report that Greg Growden passed away at 8 pm tonight.. 2020-11-14. Twitter. en.
7. Web site: FitzSimons. Peter. 2020-11-13. The Fitz Files: Dazed and confused - mixed messages on concussion in NRL, State of Origin a big problem. 2020-11-14. The Sydney Morning Herald. en.
8. Web site: FitzSimons. Peter. 2020-11-14. Vale Greg Growden, you will be long remembered. 2020-11-15. The Sydney Morning Herald. en.