Day when the Real McCoys stood up
CHRIS HEWETT
THE governing bodies of the union game are not renowned for their speed off the mark – the average tectonic plate has more fast-twitch muscle fibres than you are likely to find in the committee rooms of Twickenham – but over a period best measured by geologists, the sport has changed for the better.
Remember the rank chicanery of “shamateurism”? For those of a certain age, it is a difficult thing to forget. How about the tin-eared determination of the top brass to maintain sporting links with apartheid South Africa, even after the signing of the Gleneagles Agreement? Or the flagrant mistreatment of the very best international players, who were routinely fobbed off with a corned beef sandwich and a can of brown ale while the chaps in charge dined on slow-braised ocelot with a side of truffled orchid? All this stuff has been consigned to the dustbin of history. Good riddance to bad rubbish, methinks.
Yet in rugby’s march of progress, albeit one slow enough to make continental drift look like a knee-jerk reaction, good things have been left behind. The traditional ruck is a prime example, together with the once fundamental idea of union as a 15-man game, as opposed to one for 23, or 104, or however many it is now. And in light of last weekend’s meeting between Queensland and a Wales XV, we must also include non-Test tour fixtures as we once knew and loved them.
The match in Brisbane was not a dud: there was a decent crowd by current standards and the locals were rewarded with a strong showing from their team, who made the most of a first shot at an international side in two decades. Queensland were ahead as late as the 79th minute before going under – Down Under, you might say – by a single point.
But here’s the thing: Queensland weren’t Queensland. Not really.
How could they be, without Fraser McReight, Liam Wright, Harry Wilson, Tate McDermott, Hunter Paisami, Suliasi Vunivalu, a brace of props, a couple of hookers and one or two others here and there, all of whom were under lock and key in Wallaby camp and therefore off limits?
As for Wales, a starting line-up including Eddie James, Regan Grace, Kemsley Mathias, Evan Lloyd, Archie Griffin, Matthew Screech and Mackenzie Martin was unlikely to have Max Boyce reaching for his guitar. You could understand the selection from Warren Gatland‘s point of view – his one and only priority now is to identify and fast-track a new generation of Test candidates – but on the bill of attractions in our sporting palace of varieties, this was hard to spot amongst the small print.
Compare and contrast with the last time the two sides met, back in antediluvian 1991. The Welsh line-up was hardly the worst: Paul Thorburn, Ieuan Evans, Scott Gibbs, Mike Hall, Phil Davies, Richie Collins. Queensland, meanwhile, picked Jason Little, Tim Horan, Michael Lynagh and John Eales. Not impersonators or holograms, but the Real McCoys – some of them still young, but obviously on the road to greatness. Talk about big-ticket rugby.
“The Brisbane match was not a dud. There was a decent crowd and the Reds went down by a point”
This kind of thing was common on both sides of the Equator. When the Australians or the New Zealanders headed to Britain and Ireland on their Grand Slam missions, there was always a frisson-fuelled “fifth Test” against a pumped-up Munster or a fiery Neath or a lantern-jawed
North of England. What occasions they were.
The first time your columnist laid eyes on the All Blacks – this would have been against the South and South-West at a rammed Memorial Ground in Bristol in the late autumn of 1978 – the man of the moment was Graham Mourie, who, even at that early stage of his captaincy, was establishing himself as a leader of unusual intelligence and resourcefulness. What was he like, this pig farmer from small-town Taranaki? How big was he? How quick? How accomplished a handler, how ruthless a ball-winner, how predatory a support runner? There had been precious little footage of him on our television screens and as we couldn’t know what we hadn’t seen, his performance was always going to be an eye-opener, even in a game that turned out to be ordinary at best.
The great wing Bryan Williams also played that day, as did such masters as Bruce Robertson, Dave Love-ridge and Gary Knight. The Test with England was only a few days distant, yet here were these kings of the code in all their silver-ferned majesty, slugging it out with the 15 good men and true drawn from Kingsholm to Hellfire Corner and all points between.
It doesn’t happen that way now, worse luck: such fixtures have next to no place in an age of fly-in-and-flyback-out-again rota-fillers, and even when one is somehow shoehorned into the itinerary, ultra-protective Test coaches would rather pick a fight with Buck Shelford than expose a key player to the risk of injury.
Ah well: it is what it is, to quote dear old Martin Johnson – who, it should be said, rather enjoyed taking a swipe at Test opposition before a Test, as well as during it. If it was good enough for him…
