Johnny Cecil King (born 2 July 1942) is an Australian former rugby league footballer and coach.
[4] The formative years of King's early life were spent in Gilgandra, although prior to starting school his family was in Sydney.
His father, Cec King, had grown up in Gilgandra,[5] become a motor mechanic there, and commenced playing rugby league for the town's team before he enlisted in 1940 in the AIF.
Predicting his own future, Johnny went as a footballer to a Gilgandra children's fancy-dress ball and won a prize.
The Balmain Tigers were desperately defending their own line five minutes into the second half when they were awarded a relieving penalty.
Their kicker, Bob Boland, failed to find touch by inches as the ball fell into the outstretched hands of Saints fullback Graeme Langlands who then raced across field and sent a long cut-out pass to Billy Smith 25 yards out from the tryline.
Smith off-loaded to King, who sped the remaining 20 yards down the left wing and scored a diving try.
He formed a dangerous left-centre, left-wing partnership with Australian rugby league Immortal Reg Gasnier and scored many of his 143 club tries by being perfectly positioned to finish off after breaks by his inside men.
Between the 1964 and 1965 seasons King showed incredible fortitude to recover from a serious lawnmower accident in which his foot was partially severed to be running and fully fit for round seven of 1965.
He was at that time vying for the national wing position against his great club rivals Ken Irvine, Peter Dimond and Michael Cleary.
[20] After football King returned to central-western New South Wales and ran a hotel in Wellington where he also coached the town's rugby league team.
[22] On 20 July 2022, King was named in the St. George Dragons District Rugby League Clubs team of the century.