Young Wallabies ‘were couple of classes above’

Playing the 1977-78 Australian Schools XV was both a privilege and a nightmare as former England scrum-half Nick Youngs – father of Ben and Tom – recalls. All those years ago Nick was at Gresham’s School and as a successful member of the England Schools team the previous year had been earmarked to skipper England’s finest against the all-conquering Aussies.

The match was much anticipated, and 20,000 tickets had been sold at Twickenham in advance with a huge walk-up expected for the game – but come the day an extraordinary freezing fog descended on southern England that evoked memories of the pea-soupers of the 1950 which were accentuated by coal and woodfires.

Public transport in the south east ground to a halt and barely half of the those who bought tickets were able to attend, while those contemplating a walk-up settled for the warmth of home. Visibility at its best was about 30 yards but there were swirling patches of whiteout at Twickenham when it was effectively zero.

Michael Hawker zipped in for a hattrick, Gary Ella scored a brace and there were also tries for Glen Ella and Peter McPherson as Australia swept to a 31-9 win.

“I hadn’t played for London and the South East against them because of injury, and as the old saying goes it was probably a good game to miss. Like most opponents they got taken apart,” recalls Youngs, below. “But obviously I had plotted their path around Britain and Ireland and knew exactly what was coming our way.

“They were a couple of classes above any schoolboy rugby we had ever seen before – and I had been in an England team that won the Grand Slam the previous year and won 26-0 in Cardiff when we thought we were pretty useful.

“Their outside backs get all the plaudits but I can assure you they had a superb pack and their scrum-half Dominic Vaughan was one of the quickest passers of a ball I ever encountered at any stage of my career. After that it was down to the Ellas and co.

“For me their genius was that they didn’t stand all that far apart – certainly much closer than we had ever seen – but they came at such a sharp angle and ran onto the ball from so deep. The short passes meant that everything was done at great speed while cutting out much of the risk. It was incredibly difficult to stop.

“That short passing game served them brilliantly well on the day at Twickenham because of the reduced visibility. Standing in the middle of the pitch there was no way you could see either touchline. I would estimate visibility as between 10-20 yards. There’s no way any other game would have been played but the Aussies had come all the way from Australia and a big number of tickets had been sold. A lot of people made a big effort to somehow get to Twickenham and we wanted to try and stage a match of sorts.

“Possibly 10,000 made it in the end. Everybody tried to come down to ground level to glimpse some of the action. It was a totally bizarre game but there was absolutely no doubting who were the best team. After a short while we came to an agreement that there would be no kicking unless totally necessary, that would have reduced it to a farce.

“We both tried to keep it ball in hand so the ref had a chance of following the action and of course ball in hand was totally their game. They were incredible.”

An inspired Ireland Schools were the only team to really challenge the Aussies, giving it an almighty lash at a rain-sodden Thomond Park. They were eventually beaten 12-10 and undone by an intricate midfield move straight from the Matraville playbook.

Mark Ella passed the ball to Melrose at centre who stood still in midfield as the fly-half looped round him. Meanwhile from outside centre Gary cut a line in the opposite direction while just when it seemed Melrose would be clobbered he popped a sumptuous short ball to Glen who sliced through untouched for a try that defied the conditions.

“We had never encountered anything like them up in the Northern Hemisphere and they played a style of rugby we hadn’t seen on the TV at senior level either,” recalls Phil Matthews. who captained Ireland that day. “We raised our game two or three levels and defended like dogs, our backs were incredible in defence. The weather and conditions were atrocious and still the Aussie Schools kept true to their running philosophy.

“That key try was one of those moments that even in the heat of battle you are tempted to stand back and just applaud the opposition. How did they do that? The next time I came up against Mark Ella was on my senior Test debut six years later when he scored a try and kicked two dropgoals in their 16-9 win en route to a Grand Slam. I never played against him again. He was pretty special alright.”

It’s intriguing, if a little painful, to note that only Youngs and David Trick from that England starting XV went on to play Test rugby for England. For the Ireland team only Matthews and Paul Dean progressed, while I’m struggling to identify anybody from the Wales XV who went all the way, although skipper Owen Golding was a fine player and never far away from a cap.

That’s an extraordinarily low percentage, you would expect it to be 30 per cent or more and there is a very real sense that the Aussie schools team knocked the stuffing out of an entire year group of British rugby players. Only a few survived with their mojoh intact.