Cyril Eastlake
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Auckland, New Zealand
Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Full name | Cyril Aston Eastlake | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | 21 August 1930 Auckland, New Zealand | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Died | 30 September 2007 (aged 77) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Playing information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Position | Fullback, Wing, Centre, Five-eighth | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Cyril Aston Eastlake (21 August 1930 – 30 September 2007) was a New Zealand rugby league player who represented his nation in the sport. He captained New Zealand at the 1954 World Cup and also played at the 1960 World Cup.[1]
Eastlake was from Auckland and was educated at St Peter's College where he played rugby union. He started playing rugby league without realising it, when somebody knocked at the family house door one Saturday morning wanting to know whether the young Eastlake would play football because he was short of a player. He was due to play rugby union for St Peter's in the afternoon but he was told that he could have an "extra game". Eastlake said: "I enjoyed the game tremendously and had some success in scoring a couple of tries, mainly because both sides appeared to be a few players short and there seemed to be a lot more room to run before someone tackled you. Towards the end of the game I realised there had been very few lineouts. In fact, I couldn't remember one. Also the rucks were over so quickly that I missed seeing most of them. But all in it was a good game". In the afternoon, Eastlake played rugby union for St Peter's College against Sacred Heart. "Both sides had full teams of 15, and the game was full of lineouts and rucks, so much so that I began to wonder whether that morning's game was a different code altogether". This began Eastlake's move to rugby league and a long association with the Ellerslie club.[2]