'Just do what you've been doing': Bob McCarthy

It's not just us, we've been there and done that. It's for all the kids there now and the 30,000 members they've got and the other people yet to join up. Everyone that lives in the area ... there's red and green jumpers in the streets, and it would be great for them. A lot of them haven't seen it before, whereas I've been through six of them. It will be great to see the elation on their faces, because when we used to lose games people used to be crying on the streets, because Souths was all they had. There's a lot of people that support them out in the west too doing it pretty tough, and for them to win a grand final, it would erase all the bad memories they've had.

And your message to the current crop before Sunday?

Just go out and do what you've been doing all year ... and just tackle. You've got to tackle in grand finals, and their attack speaks for itself. They've scored 70-odd points in two knockout semi-final games. We don't have to worry about the attack, it's there, we've just got to make we sure we knock them over. Just do what you've been doing all year and tackle a bit harder, and you'll be doing a lap of honour at the end.

Michael Maguire's side have slowly brought back that local flavour to the club with plenty of juniors in the side. What was it like hanging around Redfern Oval as a little nipper?

I played there as a junior for Moore Park juniors and it was their home ground also. It wasn't very foreign to me when I went to Souths. We had juniors all through the grades back then. It's a shame it's taken them 43 years to get back in the grand final, but that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

Speaking of Madge, I'm sure the Little Master would not have come close to delivering some of the sprays of the current day coach?

You never used to see him do what those coaches do now on TV. If you play a bad game and you don't do it on purpose, he said you've just got to take it as it comes. Until the side got all pulled apart by money problems, he did a great job with the players he had. He might not have been the greatest coach in the world, but he was a good man manager, which is what you really need.

It's hard to comprehend the pure joy that comes with winning a grand final.

They're all the same, grand finals. You've got to win them, otherwise you've wasted a season. We'd been in a few before so we knew how to handle ourselves [in 1971] and you've just got to treat it like another game, but just play a bit better. It's a grand final and the whole year you strive to play in it, and a lot of elation comes, and when you lose it you wish you ran second-last.

Last one. We've already had a carpenter (Gary Stevens) and a General Motors Holden worker (John Sattler) – what tools were you on in the days leading up to the grand final?

I think I was a clerk on the wharves. Everyone worked back then. I was pretty sports-minded and there was a lot of people there, and if you did your work you were OK.