“Chook was the only footballer who ever sent one back. He was the first footballer to be a superstar. There were great players before him, such as Clive Churchill, but they weren’t part of the city’s celebrity scene, drinking champagne.”

The late Bill Mordey, a Sydney rugby league journalist, once accompanied Chook on a tour of Sydney nightclubs the evening before a big game at the SCG. Earlier that day, Mordey, a noted gambler, placed a huge bet on Raper’s team to win. But after seeing how much Chook consumed, he cancelled the bet the following morning.

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Raper went home, slept for a while and then ran through the Cronulla streets until exhausted, before returning to bed. He duly arrived at the SCG, and in a one-man show of tackling and running, won the match.

Mordey entered the dressing room to see an exhausted Chook, slumped in the showers. “I got you your money,” Chook told Mordey who later admitted, “I didn’t have the heart to tell him I cancelled the bet.”

Raper understood that all history is, in a sense, publicity. He conceded that embellishment added to his feats. “All the stories about me partying were pretty truthful,” he once told me. “I did go out on the grog the night before a game, sleep for an hour and then ran it off. But they soon had me drinking a keg and running to Wollongong.”

He allowed the myth to perpetuate that he was “the man in the bowler hat”, the footballer who walked naked down an English street in the early hours, a bowler hat on his head. It wasn’t him, but years later a bowler-hatted Chook profited from an advertisement for Jax the Ripper tyre company.

His popularity on the box eclipsed his fame on the field in the eyes of one young lad who I asked in the Dragons dressing room, “Do you know who that is?” pointing to the man who represented Australia 39 times.

“Yes, it’s Jax the Ripper,” he replied.

Yet Raper’s name must endure because he was the prototype of the modern footballer.

Coaches forever talk of the “one percenters”, the small, sacrificial acts on the field, often unnoticed by the fans, which contribute to victory.

Raper did all these, as well as being sublimely skilful, in an era when Sydney club selectors and the media focused on the try-scorers, goalkickers and scrum winners.

His greatest game was played away from Australian eyes on one of his three Kangaroos tours.

Chook dominated in Australia’s 50-12 victory over Great Britain at Swinton when the Kangaroos became the first Australian touring team in 50 years to win the Ashes.

In an opening 25-minute salvo in the second Test of the 1963 tour, Raper played a role in the first seven tries and delivered the final pass in four of them.

“I just passed the ball the right way every time,” he said of a performance which, today, would be described as playing with shape and taking the correct option.

“Swinton was his canvas,” one admirer texted.

Despite Chook’s great work ethic on the field, he preferred employment off the field in sinecures, such as “account executive” where he could remain on tour every day.

It led people to ask: “What would John Raper have done without football?”

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I told them they had the question around the wrong way: “What would rugby league have done without John Raper?”

Or more tellingly: “What would Chook have done without his enduring, forgiving, loving wife, Caryl whom he called Toots?”