Rob Kitson rugby
It is not quite a case of “Will the last rugby player out of Sydney please turn off the lights” but right now it feels that way.
When the Australian rugby union squad flew into Britain this week to join their Kang-aroo counterparts already there for the league World Cup, customs officers must have done a double-take. Anything to declare? “Yeah, mate. Two tons of green and gold tracksuits and we’ll be just as tough to beat as the other mob.”
We should, of course, be grateful rather than flippant. The chance to host simultaneously two such distinguished sets of related world champions does not occur every day. Imagine Crocodile Dundee and Dame Edna Everage in rival West End shows, or the casts of Home and Away and Neighbours shooting special editions in London at the same time. Circus Oz with studs has arrived and, if it keeps on raining, we might yet get their leading surfers as well.
Interestingly, though, few Australians are minded to lump their all-conquering rugby teams together, even in idle conversation. They may be pre-eminent on their respective fields but we are not talking bosom pals and all mates together under the Southern Cross.
The Wallaby union tour party includes Andrew Walker, who played alongside the Kang-aroo captain Brad Fittler for Sydney City Roosters before switching back to union this year, and the defensive coach John Muggleton, a 1982 Kangaroo tourist who played for Parramatta and Hull.
In the league squad, the Newcastle second-row Ben Kennedy was a promising union schoolboy, but that is about it. There are no plans for any formal get-together over the next couple of weeks and, if the rival press corps are any guide, that seems to be the way most prefer it.
“They’re a different tribe, the leaguies,” explained one union scribe, picking his words carefully. “It’s not a class thing or anything, but I doubt they’d go out of their way to meet up.”
The dog-eared stereotype still has it that, as in England, Scotland and Ireland, union in Australia draws most of its players from the smarter schools and universities while league relies on those from rougher, tougher backgrounds.
Professionalism in union has blurred that distinction globally, although it has not stopped the league boys from referring to union as “rah-rah” and their 15-a-side cousins from claiming the intellectual high ground. There was, by all accounts, a good example the other day when Fittler, being hastily briefed on the list of news organisations who wished to interview him, uttered the immortal line: “What’s CNN?” A passing journalist quickly put him straight. “Mate, it’s where presidents go for their rugby league news.”
As the accompanying statistics show, though, the old certainties are slipping. Unlike in the days of Mal Meninga, league backs are now well over 6,5kg a man lighter than in union and, financially, the gap has narrowed substantially. Fittler, the highest-paid league performer, earns in the region of 250 000 a year, but some of the juicy contracts on offer from English union clubs, not least Tim Horan’s at Saracens, are not far behind.
So, in place of league dangling golden carrots in front of David Campese without success, it is now the league winger Wendell Sailor who attracts whispered inquiries from the 15-a-side game.
At least there will always be a degree of shared heritage, the modern
prosperity of both codes dating back to the legendary Australian Schools union side of 1977-78 which contained, among others, the Ella brothers and Wally Lewis, destined to be kings of their respective codes in later years.
The incomparable Mark Ella, seeking to explain Australia’s rise to the top of the union world last weekend, is even realistic enough to concede that cohabiting with the best league players on earth has played a large part in the Wallabies’ recent supremacy.
“In 10 years,” he predicted in L’Equipe, “if the International Board doesn’t change the rules, Australia will still be leading the pack because of our dominance at league.”
As a proponent of individual flair over blanket defences, Ella declares that modern trends do nothing for him personally and are not the best course for union worldwide, but for the moment both Kangaroos and Wallabies have their eyes on more specific goals.
Is this really the best Kangaroos side since 1986? Can a Wallabies team deprived of their top men still beat England at Twickenham anyway? Those searching for consolatory crumbs will have noted the Wallabies were forced to train indoors in Edinburgh this week because of the weather, but Dame Edna was still a suburban housewife the last time any Australian rugby team suffered from an inferiority complex.