Ken and his two brothers were all exemplary sportsmen. John Thornett was a Wallabies captain who played 37 rugby union Tests for Australia over a distinguished 13-year career from 1955. Dick Thornett represented Australia at water polo, rugby league and rugby union. Much of Dick and Ken’s club football career was played together at Parramatta and they had the rare distinction of playing three international rugby league Tests together on the 1963-64 Kangaroo Tour.
As his summer sport, Ken was initially devoted to water polo along with his two brothers John and Dick. Under the tutorship of ex-Hungarian international Bert Vadas, he became an excellent goalkeeper with lightning quick reflexes, and was a member of Bronte’s inaugural 1st Grade water polo winning team of the NSWAWPA Premiership in season 1958/59, which feat the club repeated with Ken as goalkeeper in 1959/60. Unfortunately he lost contact with water polo after departing for England to play rugby league professionally in mid 1960.
Ken Thornett was initially expected to sign with South Sydney upon a proposed return to Australia for the 1962 season, however negotiations with the Rabbitohs fell through and he signed with Parramatta. Thornett played only seven games in that first season, but the resultant six wins and a draw from those games lifted Parramatta to their first-ever finals position, following eight “wooden spoons” and a paltry 20 percent win record in all matches of the previous ten seasons 1952 to 1961. Thornett played regularly with Parramatta from 1963, and totalled 136 games for the club. Thornett was the prominent Australian rugby league fullback in the early 1960s after Keith Barnes, and before Les Johns and Graeme Langlands. Ken played in all six Tests of the 1963 Kangaroo tour and in 10 minor tour games. He made a further six Test appearances and by the end of his representative career in 1964 had played three Tests each against Great Britain and New Zealand, five against France and one against South Africa. Ken Thornett captain-coached Parramatta in 1965 and 1966, but a dispute with the club saw him seek a transfer to Eastern Suburbs, but the blue and golds would not release him from the two years remaining on his contract without a large transfer fee. Ken Thornett retired at the end of 1968, but returned for one season under Ian Walsh in 1971 and helped Parramatta rise from last to fourth. Thornett died in Sydney on 16 August 2016.
