KICKOFF: Recognition for the original Indigenous All-Star

Those who played against the hard-nosed prop certainly do, as do those with any long-running association with the Wests or Dapto footy clubs.

Given Olive turns 90 on Friday, there aren't a lot of contemporaries around to tell the war stories but there were plenty. Those as esteemed in the game as the late Noel Kelly were among those who were willing to share them.

Dual-International Rex Mossop was another, his longtime broadcast offsider Barry Ross told Kickoff that 'Moose' always said Olive should've played for Australia - and that racial prejudice was probably the reason he didn't.

It was largely a suspicion spread in whispers back then. These days it's considered one of the great injustices that, while he played alongside the likes of Barnes, Holman, Wells, Provan, Raper, Irvine, Langlands, Kearney, Clay, Olive's name doesn't feature with them on the list of Australian Test players.

Being the lone player named in the Illawarra Team of the Century in 2011 that didn't play for Australia was some acknowledgement of that fact. In reality, Olive was effectively in the latter half of his career when he first shifted from Casino to Wollongong in 1957 to work in the Huntley mine and play football for Wests in the Devils' first premiership.

He played in his first interstate series for NSW a year later and again in 1959, taking on a touring, and dominant, Great Britain side of that era.

He won praise from his rivals, and legendary broadcaster Frank Hyde, but no test jumper. It was never stated explicitly, but many felt there was an ugly reality behind his omission.

"I thought [there was prejudice] but I didn't really like to talk about it," Olive recalled this week.

"I'd go to the [NSW] team functions or dinners and I'd be the only Aboriginal person there. It was a situation where it just made you uneasy.

"I played for the NSW at the [Sydney] Cricket Ground, I got Frank Hyde's 20 dollars, which was a lot of money in those days. On the Tuesday they were going to New Zealand for a Test and I didn't get a mention.

"I didn't really expect it because of the other reports I'd get. There was a lot of it as the years went through but what got me through it was just thinking 'I'm just as good as they are and they're no better than me'. That's the attitude I used to adopt."

There may have been whispers around his non-selection but there was no mistaking the racism he endured as a younger man - even in Casino where he was born and raised and emerged a rugby league star.

Olive won seven successive premierships with the Casino All Blacks, sharing the 1954 triumph alongside brothers Roy, Reg, Keith, Claude, Bruce and Jimmy - just 16.

"We had three brothers in the front row and three brothers in the back-line so we had the positions covered," he says with a chuckle.

The day-to-life though, had it's struggles.

"I worked for the council for eight or nine years," he said.

"You'd go out and work with people, a mate'd say 'come and have a beer' in the afternoon. We'd go into the hotel and order a beer and they'd say I can serve you but I can't serve him. That's just what the situation was in those days."

It was the reality of the times. Lionel Morgan - whom Olive played against in his final game for NSW in 1962 - was the first Indigenous player selected for Australia in 1960.

In broader society, it was another three years before Indigenous people were able to vote in federal elections, another eight before the 1967 Referendum saw Aboriginal Australians included in the national census.

Lionel Rose became the first Indigenous athlete to become a national hero when he beat Fighting Harada to claim the world bantamweight title in 1968. By then Olive had finished his career with a premiership with Dapto in 1968 after four years with Newtown in the Sydney premiership.

It meant plenty of time on the road with Test back-rower Paul Quinn who made the trip from Gerringong later made famous by the great Mick Cronin.

"Paul Quinn signed with Newtown the same year as me and we traveled up every Tuesday and Thursday and to play of a weekend," Olive said.

"Then we'd come back and then get up and go to work at five o'clock in the morning. They don't do that now."

It wasn't until five years after he hung up the boots, that Arthur Beetson became the first Aboriginal person to captain an Australian national team.

Things have certainly changed for the better. In the Kangaroos most recent Test, a quarter of the side were of Aboriginal heritage. Indigenous players make up more than 10 per cent of the NRL.

Olive is loath to accept any credit, but there's no question he was a pioneer, certainly not for ARLC chairman Peter V'landys who wrote to Olive last week to mark his 90^th birthday and present him with an Australian Test jumper and an Indigenous All-Stars jersey.

"It is so important that we acknowledge our history, respect our past and celebrate the game's true pioneers," the letter reads.

"We can understand how truly different rugby league was when you played and, while we cannot truly appreciate the challenges, we can always try to learn from them. We sense that, as a game, we have."

It's something that came out of the blue, but the jumpers will take pride of place in the trophy room of his Dapto home that will finally feature a Australian Test jersey.

"I got a very big surprise because I never expected it," Olive said.

"I got just as big a surprise with the [All-Stars] jumper as I did the Australian one. It's a different situation all together now, there's so many Aboriginal guys playing and it's very good to see the Indigenous team getting around.

"I started playing in 1948 and I saw them all go through, Arthur Beetson, Larry Corowa, Jonathan Thurston, Cody Walker. I played with his great grandfather back in Casino. It's unreal, I'm very proud of it."

It's why, struggles aside, the overwhelming feeling when looking back at his career is gratitude, for a host of things but none more so than a chance conversation with Wollongong-born Casino schoolteacher Norm McKnight who convinced him to take a punt on the Illawarra competition.

"He was playing for the All-Stars team and said 'would you like to go have a trial with a team?" Olive recalls.

"I said 'where is it?' he said 'down in Wollongong'. I didn't know it at all but he used to play with Western Suburbs down here. That's where it started, I got the train down. I got married a couple of weeks after that and I came down and played. They got me a flat a job and away I went.

"I always think about how things change by making one choice. I wouldn't be where I am today only for that choice. I've enjoyed every moment of it."