So synonymous was Gordon Bray with rugby union commentary in Australia that as the game was catapulted into the professional era in the mid-1990s, commercial TV stations had to fold him into the deal as they bickered over broadcasting rights.
Bray was the unrivalled “voice of rugby” in the Southern Hemisphere, and fans were simply not prepared to do without him calling Wallaby test matches.
His on-air presence combined an astute reading of the game with mesmerising, often unforgettable detail about the lives of the players. Who can forget his description of New Zealand All Black halfback Dave Loveridge as the “Taranaki pig farmer”?
His mellifluously timbred voice is a far cry from what today has become an effort not so much to describe the on-field action as to scream about it, often in baying, primeval whoops and whoas.
Bray has brought his years in the sport to bear on a new and timely book – The Immortals of Australian Rugby. Following similar tomes for Australian cricket, rugby league, surfing and motor racing, he was asked to select the top 15 Wallabies of all time. Not the top Wallaby team, mind – though Bray offers that too here – but the greatest of the great. Or what he calls ‘super greats’.
His research and sheer rugby acumen is the best placed to spirit supporters into the game’s pantheon.
In an exclusive interview with AFR Weekend, Bray admits his first reaction to being given the task was an “anxiety attack”. The statistics were themselves mountainous – he had to pick only 15 players from a cohort of 900 who had worn the Australian jersey over a period of 125 years.
“It quickly became apparent I would have to be pretty ruthless in my culling process”, he admits.
He was. It is somewhat inevitable that the bulk of the players chosen for immortality come from Wallaby sides in the 1980s and 1990s, when the side won a Grand Slam in the United Kingdom in 1984 – beating England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland in succession – and a rare Bledisloe Cup win on New Zealand soil in 1986.
That was the last time an Australian side beat New Zealand at Eden Park in Auckland. This writer was in Year 7 at the time. And the nucleus of that team went on to win the World Cup in 1991, a feat repeated by the Wallabies in 1999.
It means that players from the period before the First World War are scarce in this honour roll. Bray wanted to include Dally Messenger, but his defection to rugby league ruled him out. Disloyalty such as this is not forgotten, irrespective of the player’s talent.
Only one from that period, the elegant Cyril Towers, the father of the distinctive running game of the Wallabies, makes the cut. And after the Second World War, there is only room for the oak-like John Thornett, wily halfback Ken Catchpole and the graceful centre Trevor Allan. Thornett is one of only four forwards in the line-up, alongside John Eales, Simon Poidevin and George Smith.
Not surprisingly, given the reputation Australian sides have gained for free flowing backline play, 11 of Bray’s 15 immortals stood behind the scrum. In addition to Towers, Catchpole and Allan, readers will find Mark Ella, David Campese, Nick Farr-Jones, Michael Lynagh, Tim Horan, Matthew Burke, George Gregan and Stephen Larkham. Queensland gets three players overall, the ACT four and NSW seven. That in itself is bound to cause the odd argument, but Bray’s book does contain a list of honourable mentions for those who fell short at the gates of “immortality”.
In any case, as Bray tells it, he was less interested in what side of the border the players came from than in what they represented in terms of the values of the game, and how they got to its pinnacle.
He says: “In 1936 Cyril Towers took himself to Hamburg on a bicycle and trained with the great American Olympic sprinter Jesse Owens to sharpen his speed.
“Nineteen-year-old Trevor Allan became a Wallaby in New Zealand in his first year out of school. Astonishingly, Ken Catchpole was named as captain/coach for the 1961 Wallaby tour of South Africa at just 21 years of age… in formative high school, Michael Lynagh played gridiron in the US. It gave him an early exposure to the need for mental and physical toughness.
“First time in a Wallaby jumper at 19 in 1982, David Campese was named one of the Five Players of the Year in NZ that year.
“Stephen Larkham’s dad built goalposts for his son to practice kicking on the family property at Yass. In the 1999 World Cup semi-final, Larkham kicked the most important drop goal in Australian rugby history.”
These were “little kids with big dreams” once, Bray observes. He wants their stories to act as the inspiration for a new crop of younger fans struggling to find in the modern game the players to look up to.
Barring an appearance in the World Cup final of 2003, lost to England, it has been mostly downhill since for Australian rugby, culminating in the ignominious exit from last year’s tournament in France without reaching the quarter-finals, a first for the Wallabies.
The immortals may well have to wait a long time before their list is lengthened, though Bray is confident that “green shoots have emerged this year at the professional level”.
Much hope and expectation are being placed on next year’s British and Irish Lions tour to Australia, followed by Australia’s hosting of the Rugby World Cup in 2027, to revive an ailing code’s fortunes. If that doesn’t come to pass, the pages of Bray’s entertaining book are going to become much more well-thumbed by nostalgic supporters searching for lost gold.
- Initially published as “Who were the 15 greatest Wallabies of all time?” in the Australian Financial Review.
- The Immortals of Australian Ruby Union by Gordon Bray (Gelding Street).
- James Curran is the AFR’s International Editor and the author of Campese: The Last of the Dream Sellers (Scribe 2001).
