Ranji Joass is a favorite son of Wests and Rugby League generally. He gave great service to Wests from 1911 until 1923 after establishing himself as a very good First Grade rugby union player with St George as early as 1906.
During his rugby union career, he played for Metropolitan teams against a visiting New Zealand team, a Country representative team, and American Universities.
To understand the commitment that early players had, an article appeared in The Sun Newspaper in 1942 about another Wests legend, Tedda Courtney.
Tedda Courtney said. “When times were hard, money scarce, and cross country transportation sparse, we walked many miles to training headquarters, nearly always accompanied by “Ranji” Joass.
Actually, we had done our training before we arrived, said Ted.” Ranji Joass and Ted Courtney lived in the suburb of Lakemba, so it would have been about a 16 kilometre return walk to training.
