All aboard the Australian rugby bandwagon

The recent success and glitzy style of the Waratahs has lured more than a few supporters out of the woodwork.

With its comfy seats and fluffy blue cushions, it has never been easier to take a ride on the rugby bandwagon.

Generally I loiter around the smoky parlours of the football and cricket tabs on this site, but occasionally I have been known to lurk in the rugby corridors.

In fact I have learnt more about the strategies and tactics of the game from Roar posters than from Australian TV commentators whose two great maxims seem to be: “that was never a penalty against the Wallabies” and “those All Blacks have been cheating all day long”.

Rugby in Australia has been especially suited to bandwagoners. In the 70s, if club rugby was not your thing there was only a few rep games and some Tests you needed to worry about.

The Tests always had a great atmosphere regardless of the opponent. The first Test I ever saw live was Australia versus the USA at the SCG around the end of the 1970s. Even considering the disparity of the teams a crowd of over 30,000 turned up.

Some of the best moments happened in those other representative games, the greatest of which occurred in a match between Sydney and Country. After a penalty tap, the ball was passed to a line of Country players with their backs turned to the opposition.

Then they all turned at once with their arms to their chests running this way and that, the ball nowhere to be seen. Known as the ‘ball up the jumper affair’ it was the rugby version of the underarm bowling incident without the sour taste.

It made you jump out of your seat and cheer.

Running rugby was always a characteristic of the Australian scene. I suspect it was the pervasive influence of rugby league that made keeping the ball in hand an important part of the Australian rugby psyche.

My father used to say that union always produced the best tries. And it was true. You would often see the ball pass through 15 pairs of hands until the winger dived over in the corner.

Then there was the conversion. It involved pouring a bucket of wet sand on the field – which hopefully Whiskers the team mascot hadn’t left one of her little messages in – placing the ball, then running in and booting the living daylights out of it with the point of your toe.

More often than not it would skew wildly onto the dog track but the players would just shrug and figure that they would need to score a few more tries. At this point I would throw open the question – were there ever any toe-kickers in SA or NZ?

Eventually the around-the-corner kicking style became the norm and Australia only needed the x-factor to improve their stocks.

That x-factor was supplied by David Campese. Campo was both brilliant and unpredictable. When those two traits were combined, he was unpredictably brilliant. He could catch a ball at full speed, dummy to a teammate, throw a pass to himself then goose-step around three players to score.

With Campo on board, Australia eventually began to challenge the best.

Rugby was dragged into the modern age with the introduction of TMO. With no rucks, mauls, or pushover tries, it is quite easy in rugby league to catch a good view of the crucial moment, even if obtaining the correct decision is generally only a 50/50 shot.

It wasn’t quite as smooth in rugby though. In live play you would see 20 blokes piling on the ground over an unseen ball and the ref call for the TMO. Then you would watch 20 blokes in slow motion piling on the ground over an unseen ball and try to make a decision.

Classic! Without a V for video or R for replay, I am still uncertain as to what TMO actually stands for. Perhaps it is Afrikaans?

That brings the history lesson around to the 2014 Waratahs. A family birthday celebration prevented me from watching the game but thanks to the wonderful commentary on The Roar I was still able to follow it.

And what a game! This is how the final five minutes panned out for me: infringement by ‘Tahs, chorus of happy birthday, Crusaders convert penalty, old Uncle Harry loses dentures blowing out candles, penalty ‘Tahs, a server crash – and the Tahs win!

Magic!

It looks as though I will need to hand over my seat on the bandwagon to a more worthy candidate but I enjoyed the ride. And if I ever wander past the rugby door again I might just stop by and listen.