Inside Easts: Graeme Bookallil and the Best Sin Bin in Sydney

By Angus Hayman

Graeme and his Sin Bin

Every rugby club has one. The man who gives everything with no expectation of anything in return. The one that remembers everything. The wins, the losses, and especially the injustices.

At Easts, that man is Graeme. Born in 1947, quickly moving to the Eastern Suburbs, Graeme’s connection with the club stretches back nearly six decades.

He first pulled on an Easts jersey in the Under 18s in 1965, and as he’s quick to point out, there was immediate success.

Graeme is center

“We obviously won the comp as well,” he says, almost brushing it aside. “But back to the details…”

A man who is as modest as they come, but just like the rest of us, always circles back to the silverware.

“If I’m going to be honest, academics were never my strong suit,” he admits. “And maybe East's rugby was a distraction.” That “distraction” became something much more.

Playing halfback, Graeme quickly embedded himself in the rhythm of the club. But like any good rugby story, his playing days came with a twist. One he remembers with remarkable clarity.

“I got dropped a few years in,” he says. “Could you guess it? I was dropped for the manager’s son.”

There’s a pause. A smile.

“I’m not dirty… I’ve moved on.”

He hasn’t. Not in the slightest. And that’s exactly what makes the story…. and Graeme… so good.

His playing career at Easts lasted just three years, but it was only the beginning of a remarkable journey. By the early 1970s, he had moved into coaching, getting involved with the Bays juniors in 1971, 1972, and 1973.

And, to no surprise, there was success again.

“We won premierships for fun,” he says, with the same casual tone — as if it just kept happening around him.

Then, like many club stories, life moved on. Years passed. But Easts never really left him. Fast forward to five years ago, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, when Graeme stumbled across an advertisement: Easts Rugby was looking for volunteers.

“I pretended to toss up the idea,” he says. “But I knew very quickly that I really wanted to get back involved.”​

It didn’t take long. As soon as he reached out, the club told him to come down the following week.

“I turned up on a Saturday morning,” Graeme recalls, “and without much small talk Ian Cohen just looked at me with a grin and said, ‘You’re in the sin bin, mate.’”

Graeme laughs at the memory. “I thought, jeez… I'd better take this more seriously than my punting on the horses.”

That was the beginning of his second life at Easts. These days, Graeme is the club’s Assistant Game Day Manager. A title that hardly does justice to what he actually does.

From 8am to 6pm every Saturday, he’s everywhere. Organising, helping, directing, chatting, remembering. Always remembering. He’s the first to arrive, one of the last to leave, and somehow in the middle of everything that makes a game day tick.​

It’s a long day. A demanding role. And one that rarely gets the spotlight. But Graeme wouldn’t have it any other way. Because for all the jokes, the stories, and the half-serious grudges that have somehow survived since the 1960s, what really drives him is simple: connection.

This is his club. It always has been. And while he might describe himself as “just a volunteer,” anyone around Easts knows that’s not quite true. He’s part historian, part worker, part entertainer, and entirely irreplaceable.

An unsung hero? Most definitely.