Gerringong rugby league legend Mick Cronin has been inducted into the NRL Hall of Fame.
The NRL stated, Michael Cronin was a magnificent centre and one of the greatest point-scoring machines the game has known, at both club and representative levels.
In his 10 seasons with Parramatta, after coming from Gerringong on the NSW South Coast, Cronin scored 1971 points in 216 games.
He also scored 173 points for NSW and incredible 201 points in Test matches.
The Gerringong publican said, “When you’re talking about the players up on that board, when I first came into rep football I played with the likes of blokes like Langlands, Fulton, Beetson, Coote, McCarthy, so all those names are up there.
He said “You’ve got to be lucky in your life and at Parramatta, there was Stirling, Kenny and players like Ray Price and I got to play in some good sides with some great players.”
Parramatta and Australian teammate Ray Price said, “There have been a lot of fine goalkickers and fine players, but very few of them can claim to be regarded as greats on both counts.”
The NRL noted there were many highlights to Cronin’s magnificent career, but undoubtedly one of his greatest seasons was 1978, when he scored 543 points in all matches, including 282 points for the premiership year and 26 goals in succession.
He also went on his second Kangaroo tour and won a second successive Rothmans Medal.
Cronin’s representative career began in 1973 when he represented NSW Country and was a shock selection in the Kangaroo squad. He finished that tour as leading point-scorer, and was an international regular from 1974.
In 1977, he decided to link up with Parramatta, and despite continuing to live in Gerringong, where he ran the local pub, and commuting to Sydney for training and matches, was one of the key factors in Parramatta winning four premierships in the 1980s.
He went out in glory in 1986 by landing two pressure goals to steer his team to a 4–2 grand-final victory over Canterbury.
At that time, he was the highest point scorer in Sydney premiership history, and Australia’s leading scorer in Test football.
