The Hands That Healed Bradman

GH on a forgotten man who changed history

It was all in the fingers. They were like steel. They searched along his back, across his shoulders, down his spine, and wherever they encountered resistance, wherever they detected pain, they plunged in, dug deep, seemed almost to gouge out the hurt.

Donald Bradman had been skeptical. He was a serious, rational man. He was only here because no doctor seemed capable of relieving his chronic pain, submitting to the care of a ‘masseur’ who practised openly with barely a hint of training.

But it was working. When Bradman rose from the massage table in that unassuming Brunswick cottage eighty years ago, he likened the ‘the relief from searing muscle pain’ to ‘a draft of ice cold water in a heat wave.’ He would need further treatment, the masseur said, but the prognosis was good. Having almost despaired of ever taking the field again, the game’s most famous man felt a wave of unfamiliar optimism.

Bill Andrews originated a famous joke greeting that eventually provided the title of his autobiography: ‘Shake the hand that bowled Bradman’. This instead is the story of the hands that healed Bradman, making possible those valedictory home summers, the Invincibles, maybe even the knighthood. And steel-fingered Ernest Saunders was more significant still - the founder of a sports medical dynasty, unequalled in prowess and reputation, that lasted half a century.

*

Ern’s grandson Graeme Saunders lives in Whittlesea, a couple of hours from Melbourne, where he is keeper of the last vestiges of the family saga. Graeme ‘met’ Bradman just before he was born when the Don paid a visit to Brunswick after the 1948 tour and stayed for supper with his pregnant mother. He was ‘such a gentleman’, she used to say. The story is that his parents’ marriage had already been delayed because Ern was busy treating Ray Lindwall and Ern Toshack; there is a beautiful photograph of Ern doting on Graeme in Brunswick’s backyard.

Today, Graeme is surrounded by a vibrant collection of official Australian gear bequeathed by his father George, who inherited his father’s practice, and ministered to Australian athletes at eight Olympics and five Commonwealth Games.

Above all there are the autograph books, attesting the subtle ubiquity of the Saunders family not only in sport but in entertainment and culture. There are the signatures of Bradman, punctiliously dated ‘13-3-46’, along with not only Lindwall, Toshack, Bill Woodfull, Ian Johnson, Arthur Morris and Bill O’Reilly but Betty Wilson, Peggy Antonio and Nell McLarty.

You find runners, boxers, basketballers, jumpers, jockeys, swimmers, skaters, tennis players, tight-rope walkers; you find businessmen, dancers, radio stars, and other personalities, from the aviatrix Lores Bonney to the actress Dot Rankin. Some, like the tragic Dave Sands, stress their intimacy by using Ern’s abiding nickname ‘Pop’.

Others, like Chief Littlewolf, whose mighty wrestling career was almost ended by a 1946 broken leg, tribute both father and son.