The Invincibles

Mark Flanagan

Description

In the autumn of 1982 a youthful Australian rugby league squad embarked on a 22-leg tour of the UK and France, with the highlight of three Test matches against Great Britain.

Four years earlier the Kangaroos had won a close-fought series 2-1, and another titanic struggle was expected.

But this new generation of Aussies proved extraordinarily brilliant.

The likes of Mal Meninga, Brett Kenny, Eric Grothe, Wayne Pearce, Peter Sterling and Wally Lewis played an exhilarating brand of high-risk, free-flowing rugby which dazzled British fans.

The tourists made history by winning every game, marking the start of a golden era for Test rugby league - and many of the Australian stars went on to enjoy successful stints playing club rugby in England, famously Meninga (St Helens), Sterling (Hull) and Kenny (Wigan).

As a rugby league side the Aussies had everything, and became known as the Invincibles.

This is their story, told by those who faced the challenge of tackling one of world sport''s greatest ever teams.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing
• Date de parution: 12 août 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785315930
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2019
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Mark Flanagan, 2019
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-526-8 eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-593-0
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Contents
Foreword
Introduction
The Last Hurrah
The Gap Widens
My Name is John
The Countdown to 82
The Kangaroos
Six Out of Six
The First Test
Where Do We Go From Here?
Invincible
The Long Road Back
The Postscript
Match Statistics
Foreword
T HE 1982 Kangaroos were like nothing that had ever been seen before. Not only were they supremely skilful and athletic, but they seemed to have a command of time and space that defied the laws of physics. Through them, so it seemed, we caught a glimpse of what it would be like if an advanced civilisation from outer space ever landed on Earth.
The 1982 Kangaroos were not only the greatest rugby league team ever to play the game, they were also one of the greatest sports teams of all time.
Max Krilich and his men belong in the pantheon alongside Pele s 1970 Brazil, Dave Gallacher s 1905 All Blacks and America s 1992 Olympic basketball Dream Team .
As Mark Flanagan points out in these pages, no one in Australia or Britain had any sense of what was about to happen when the tourists left Sydney. But, as the first matches of the tour unfolded, those who saw the Kangaroos play realised that something profound was happening. And that became apparent to everyone on the Saturday of October 1982 when the first Test was broadcast on the BBC.
Great Britain were humiliated, but by the end of the match no one really cared. We were watching players from another planet. Attack that seemed to be unstoppable. Defence that appeared impenetrable. Backs who played like forwards. Forwards who played like backs.
These were names that belonged to the ages. Eric Grothe ran with the ball as if he was auditioning for Easy Rider . Mal Meninga looked like the Colossus at Rhodes had come to life and decided to be a rugby league player. Peter Sterling appeared to know the precise position and intention of every player on the pitch before they themselves knew. Wayne Pearce seemed to have dropped in from the 21st century to show how the rugby league player of the future would play. And that is not even to mention such titans as Brett Kenny, Wally Lewis, Steve Rogers, Kerry Boustead and Ray Price.
The sheer breathtaking brilliance of the Kangaroos made the tour the most extraordinary sporting experience that British rugby league supporters had ever known. This was rugby league, but not as we knew it. This was the game how we had dreamed it could be, played at unrelenting pace and intensity by the most skilful athletes in the world.
They were the greatest team playing the greatest game of all. And rugby league still lives in their shadow today.
This book is their tribute.
Tony Collins
Introduction
T HE prolific rugby league author and historian Robert Gate was in no doubt: Max Krilich s Kangaroos of 1982 were arguably the greatest international rugby combination either code has produced in any era. All the superlatives that were rained upon them barely did them justice. They were the true nonpareils . Even allowing for the paucity of the opposition afforded them by Great Britain, those privileged to have witnessed the complete and utter annihilation of their antagonists were acutely aware that, as rugby teams go, Australia 1982 were as near to perfection as makes no difference.
It is a view widely held by those lucky enough to have watched the Green and Golds light up the stagnating rugby league landscape of Britain in the autumn of that year. They blew through northern strongholds like a tornado, playing at a pace and with a purpose few had ever seen.
Including their games in France, Australia broke records galore, famously becoming the first international team to win all their tour matches (22), although perhaps more striking was the points difference. They piled up 1005 - it was the final season of three points for a try - and conceded just 120. In three Tests the beleaguered home side would cross the try line just once. Such statistics shook the rugby league establishment to its core.
Frank Stanton s Kangaroos were undeniably great. They redefined what was possible, a trait that unites the absolute standout sporting performers of the last 150 years. These include the likes of Don Bradman, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Lionel Messi, the 1927 New York Yankees, Rinus Michels Ajax side of the late 60s and early 70s and the Chicago Bulls basketball team who astonished on a weekly basis in the 90s.
Many seasoned watchers could see it coming, though. In 1979 the Great Britain tourists became the first for 40 years to be whitewashed in a three-Test series. Their defeats included a humiliating 35-0 rout in the opener at Lang Park in Brisbane, when Stanton s hugely successful stint in charge of the Kangaroos was gathering momentum. It is amazing to consider that for him, and Australia, the best was yet to come.
But many others saw the coming tsunami long before that. The last great high point for British rugby league was unquestionably the 1970 tour of Australia. Coached by John Whiteley and inspired by the likes of Cliff Watson, Malcolm Reilly and Roger Millward, the Lions roared back to win the series after being humbled in the first Test. The visiting Poms were lauded back home and down under for their excellence in both defence and attack. They were considered ahead of their time. During that trip, John, who would return to the GB hotseat in 1980, visited a primary school in New South Wales and watched dozens of 10- and 11-year-olds being put through their paces. One of the players who accompanied him was Leeds winger Alan Smith, who remembers the experience as one that proved sobering for Gentleman John .
John and I were watching them and it was serious stuff, even at that age, said Smith. He just turned to me and said, This lot will thrash us in ten years time.
Whiteley s extraordinarily prophetic, off-the-cuff comment was borne of a man so deeply ingrained in the sport and so sure of what was critical to success. He had led Hull to many honours. As an international he had been central during the Lions golden age and between 1956 and 1962 Britain never lost an Ashes series. Whiteley was a fitness fanatic and in the 60s and 70s spent a lot of his spare time supporting the amateur game in his native Hull. He saw first-hand the decline of the game at grassroots level. During that same period in Australia, rugby league was booming at all levels. In the 70s it was spreading from its power bases in New South Wales and Queensland to all parts of the country. At schools level the expansion was breathtaking.
At the top, the sport itself was also undergoing something of a revolution, led by coach Jack Gibson. While the authorities were getting tough with players to curb excessive on-field violence, Gibson, who led Eastern Suburbs (in 1974 and 1975) and Parramatta (from 1981 to 1983) to multiple Sydney Premiership titles, had studied the training methods of the top American football sides and incorporated much of what he saw into his coaching ethos.
Gibson built his incredible success on spending as much of his time focusing on defence as attack. He championed the benefits of detailed preparation, the importance of conditioning and training with heavy weights, and also the merits of coaches, rather than selectors, picking teams.
By the late 70s the fruit of all those labours was becoming evident down under and by 1982 British rugby league was wholly unprepared to meet this perfect storm . On the eve of their flight to the UK, Australian loose forward Ray Price confided to an Australian journalist that he believed they would win every game.
In his book, Gibson wrote: Winning starts on Monday, not ten minutes before the game. It s confidence all week long, and it s confidence for the month before that and the year before that. People can t be motivated on a five-minute speech before they run out onto a football paddock. It s something you have to wake up with - knowing that your preparation was right. Having the confidence that, whatever comes up, you are ready.
Stanton and the rest of the squad were ready. Britain s coach knew it too and there was little that even he, a great champion of the game, could do about the green and gold juggernaut.
Were they the greatest rugby league team of all time?
Well, that will be debated for ever and a day but undeniably their impact was felt for decades to come in both codes of the sport. Their feats also heralded a golden age for British rugby league in terms of a wider awareness outside of its northern heartlands, although the day-to-day reality for so many English clubs in the early 1980s was one of struggling to make ends meet. For years, so many at the top of the game failed to grasp what was required of them. The sport was professional in as much as players were paid to play. Otherwise it was largely old men in smoky committee rooms concerning themselves with petty politics.
The Invincibles brought into the sharpest possible focus everything that was wrong with the British game, especially on that astonishing October day in Hull