The best there is. The best there was. The best there ever will be.

That is Bob Fulton.

I recently posted a piece about how a boy from Granville became a Manly fan. The first footy card of Bob Fulton I got was the 1977 Easts one. I was a kid. I didn’t know then the impact Fulton had on Manly.

Until my Mum bought me a magazine about Grand Finals. This was the holy grail for a young footy fan. I learned about Reg Gasnier and John Sattler. Norm Provan and Tom Bourke. Jack Rayner and John Raper.

And Bob Fulton.

By the early 1980s I was entrenched as a Sea Eagles fan. Our local video store happened to have copies of the 1973 Grand Final. I think I rented it at least once a month.

When Fulton came back to Manly in 1983 as coach he brought some of his Easts players with him. Kerry Boustead, Noel Cleal, Ian Schubert and Dave Brown added to the 1982 Manly side that made the Grand Final, but they still couldn’t quite get the job done.

Bob Fulton then added to his coaching aura by resettling an impetuous lock forward from North Sydney named Cliff Lyons at the Sea Eagles. Fulton then picked a halfback out of Penrith’s reserve grade side, and made him not just a star player for Australia, but a coach to follow on from the Fulton legacy. His name was Des Hasler. In 1987, with the addition of the out-of-favour second rower Ron Gibbs; the hulking prop forward from Great Britan, Kevin Ward; the mercurial centre Michael O’Connor from St George; and tha mainstays - Paul Vautin, Noel Cleal, Mal Cochrane, Phil Daley, Dale Shearer….the Sea Eagles defeated Canberra in the Grand Final to claim the premiership.

Perhaps Bob Fulton’s greatest triumph was the 1995 World Cup. At the height of the Super League war, Fulton molded a new Australian side, bereft of their previous years’ best players, and turned them into literal world beaters.

Because that’s what Bob Fulton was all about. A world beater. A champion.

The best there ever was.

Rest in peace, my childhood hero.