Greatest XV: Smart cookie who loved the buffet, a sly pint and trench warfare

For a full 30 seconds, prop Ewen McKenzie was the hero of the Wallabies’ first World Cup final triumph in 1991.

The British commentary team identified the burly prop as Australia’s try-scorer and the broadcast followed the Randwick stalwart on camera, complete with a name graphic on screen.

The Roar is counting down the Wallabies’ Greatest World Cup XV of all time from No. 15-1 with thanks to thousands of votes from our readers.

Alas, in even quicker time he was back to being the Wallabies’ unsung tighthead. Prop partner Tony Daly was officially awarded the team’s solitary try at Twickenham when he and McKenzie mauled the ball off a 5m lineout and plunged over.

McKenzie did aid Daly by pulling him and the ball over the tryline. It’s a highlight moment in The Front-Row Hall of Fame.

McKenzie and Daly always joke that each scored two points (because they were the days of the four-point try).

Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie walks off the pitch following warm-up during The Rugby Championship match between Argentina and the Australian Wallabies at Estadio Malvinas Argentinas on October 4, 2014 in Mendoza, Argentina. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

That’s largely the life of a top Test prop…you can’t do without them but they rarely garner plaudits. It’s only when something goes haywire at scrum-time that the world pays attention.

McKenzie was an integral part of the 1991 World Cup success as the rock of the scrum.

In fact, McKenzie had packed down with hooker Phil Kearns and Daly in all 16 of his Tests as that final unfolded. They’d played together in NSW teams together and the McKenzie-Daly combination at Under 21 level before that. That value of cohesion and familiarity in the trenches seems too flippantly undervalued these days.

They were a close unit and the night before the 1991 semifinal win over the All Blacks, McKenzie, Kearns, Daly and Rod McCall caught up for a few sly pints on match eve.

“These were the old days, and no one knew any better,” McKenzie said later. “I remember turning and looking to my right and there was Grizz Wyllie, the All Blacks coach, standing there thinking ‘here’s the Australian tight-forwards drinking, we should be right in this semi-final’.

“In the end we played pretty well.”

The fact that the Wallabies had a rock-solid set piece as a platform for the 1991 success only truly comes into focus when you realise what it is like without one.

Take Stirling Mortlock’s 2007 World Cup Wallabies in France. They were dismantled in the scrum by England and it was bye-bye in the quarter-finals in Marseille.

McKenzie has won the nod as tighthead in the The Roar’s Greatest Wallabies RWC XV. It would always have been a close-run thing with Andrew Blades, another quiet yet invaluable achiever in the same position for the 1999 World Cup champions.

McKenzie was good company even if he was not an overly talkative type compared to Daly’s big personality and the ultra-confidence of Kearns.

The two props did share a love of food and quantity at the buffet. And, of course, scrummaging well.
At the Randwick club, Kearns quickly struck up a friendship with the young McKenzie whose tastes tended to the Guns N’ Roses and AC/DC end of the music spectrum.

He’d landed at Randwick from Melbourne because his university studies in town planning took him to Sydney. Correct: He was not cut from the stereotypical granite of a prop because there was room for some serious intelligence.

McKenzie had mobility and ball skills to go with his scrum craft in a frame of 116kg-plus.

As if to prove their status as one of the Wallabies’ best front-rows, McKenzie, Daly and Kearns expanded their job descriptions and all scored tries in a Test romp over the USA at Ballymore in 1990.

McKenzie started in five of the six Tests of the 1991 World Cup campaign and made it to a second World Cup in South Africa four years later.

He played 51 Tests, 50 as a starter, as Australia’s pre-eminent tighthead prop in one of the Wallabies’ most successful eras.

He scored two tries during that long service in gold. The Wallabies and McKenzie will always feel pride that it was two-and-half.

He achieved the rare double of playing for the Wallabies and also coaching them when he rose to that role for 22 Tests in 2013-14.

Ewen McKenzie is your choice of No.3 for The Roar’s Greatest Wallabies Rugby World Cup XV, powered by ASICS, the Official Performance Apparel and Footwear supplier for the Wallabies. Link won with 42% of the vote, followed by Sekope Kepu and Taniela Tupou. Check back tomorrow to find out who was selected at No.2.

Get your hands on the wonderful new ASICS Wallabies RWC strips which is available to purchase in-store, and online now at asics.com.au.

The Roar’s Greatest Wallabies Rugby World Cup XV

• Fullback: Matthew Burke
• Right Winger: Ben Tune
• Outside Centre: Stirling Mortlock
• Inside Centre: Tim Horan
• Left Winger: David Campese
• Fly-half: Stephen Larkham
• Scrum-half: George Gregan
• Number Eight: Toutai Kefu
• Openside Flanker: George Smith
• Blindside Flanker: Owen Finegan
• Second Row: John Eales (c)
• Second Row: Dan Vickerman
• Tight Head Prop: Ewen McKenzie