The 1999 Rugby Union World Cup was held in Wales, with the final in the newly opened Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. Australia had reached the final by beating South Africa in their semi-final at Twickenham, overcoming the South African drop-kicking machine with style and imagination, which England had so sorely lacked the week before in their quarter-final against the South Africans, to win 27-21. The French had overcome the favourites for the cup in what was by far the best match of the tournament when they overwhelmed the New Zealand All Blacks 43-31. However, they could not repeat the fireworks at Cardiff, and succumbed to the Australians 35-12. This article from the Sydney Morning Herald of November 8, 1999, dissects the powers of the Australian team that had made them champions of the world for the second time, having won the cup for the first time in 1991.

Macqueen’s the King

It doesn’t get better than this. For the past six weeks, Australia have proceeded in triumphal fashion against the best the world could throw at them; conceded only one try along the way; played bursts of truly exhilarating football, including many memorable tries; and ultimately won the day with the eyes of the world upon them.

Aside from the rugby, they were an engaging and modest side off the field, never getting lost in hubris, and projected a much-needed sense of enormous enjoyment in the campaign in which they were engaged. They are a team of which Australia can be proud at all levels.

In the afterglow, one cannot help but feel particularly delighted for Rod Macqueen. He is a man who three times in the 1980s guided his Warringah club side all the way to a grand final, only to be denied three times; who once in the 1990s managed to get the ACT Brumbies into the Super 12 final but once again fell short.

Now, after taking over a Wallaby side at the end of 1997 which was only a couple of strewn bricks short of rubble, he not only managed to put them in the constant ascendant but guided them all the way to the summit on Saturday afternoon.

Macqueen can now take his place on modern Australian rugby’s Rushmore of great and significant coaches, together with Alan Jones and Bob Dwyer.

Part of his success has been to establish a team culture in which his charges have been given enough structure to be a fantastically cohesive and organised team and yet still have parameters of action wide enough to allow them to express their individual brilliance.

There is no better example than centre Tim Horan. Nick Farr-Jones has described him as the man of the tournament, and he was probably close to man of the match in the final as well—all of this in his 11th year of international rugby. If we are going to stay with this wretched monarchy for another year or two, would it be asking too much to arrange him a knighthood?

Seemingly every time Horan got the ball—starting just two minutes in when he made a wonderful 30m break—he made an impact, nearly always breaking the first line of defence and often breaking free entirely. He was a dynamo, always in the French faces in attack and constantly wrapped around their ankles in defence.

Watching him from the stands was his proud father, Mike Horan, who a little less than three decades ago, as coach of the Gympie under-7 rugby league side, was obliged to ask the four-year-old Tim to take the field for fear that his team would be disqualified when some of his players hadn’t turned up.

Tim finally did so, but only on the promise of a bag of mixed lollies—which was his “payment” to play every Saturday morning for the next three years until his football career took on a momentum of its own that would ultimately take him to two World Cup victories.

“Those days with the bags of lollies feel like a long, long time ago,” Horan said with a laugh after the game. His father, for his part, simply couldn’t stop smiling.

Though Horan’s partner in the centres, Daniel Herbert, also played wonderfully well, there was a certain sense of completion among rugby romantics when Jason Little ran on to replace him early in the second half, thus restoring the famous centre pairing of Horan ‘n’ Little which has been such a force in Australian rugby since the two best friends turned out for Queensland schoolboy representative sides.

On the wing, Ben Tune probably never played a finer game. From the opening moment he was an attacking and defensive weapon, culminating in his wonderful try midway through the second half which broke the French bank. At full pace on the right flank, he spied the exceedingly fragile French fullback Xavier Garbajosa, put his head down and barrelled straight towards him. The subsequent try brought to mind Dave Brockhoff’s famous exhortation to his forwards:

“It’s like crowbars through the Opera House windows, lads; we’re in, we loot the joint, and then we’re out again.” So too with Tune—within a minute he was charging right at them again.

There were two other particularly notable performances. At No. 8, Toutai Kefu was everything that Taine Randell, with respect, hadn’t been the week before against the French. That is, Kefu constantly penetrated their defences. Yes, the French were mostly able to finally stop him, but like Willie Ofahengaue at his best, it always took three men to do it—leaving France short-handed when the seven-man Wallaby cavalry arrived in full cry, often up against only five French forwards left on their feet.

And then there was David Giffin, John Eales’s partner in the second row. For some reason this extremely hard-working player attracts very little media or public attention, but it is not for nothing that he has been able to keep as good a player as Tom Bowman on the bench.

Time and again Giffin won clean lineout ball, ran around to hit the ensuing ruck with furious force and, just as many times again, took the ball forward on the charge. Often the first French defender would be bracing himself to bring him down when, at the very last instant, Giffin would sidestep—not quite like Brett Papworth, but effective all the same—meaning he’d get through and impact on the second line of defence as well. Giffin’s not a fashionable player yet, but he bloody well ought to be.

On the French side, Abdel Benazzi was a constant flying torpedo and, though he never blew Australia out of the water entirely, he still did fearful damage.

With him, breakaway Olivier Magne was less apparent than he had been against the All Blacks the previous week, but he still did an amazing amount of work. Not surprisingly for a man who wears headgear with exactly the same design as the match football—white with green stripes—his head was soon bleeding and he twice had to leave the field for running repairs.

But enough with the report cards already.

For those not emotionally involved—as in the French or Australians—this apparently wasn’t one of the great games of our time, but it was good enough for all that.

It was a great Wallaby victory in the way such victories should be, with a sense that it was more than merely the XV on the field who were involved. Afterwards, Eales spoke movingly about the effect it had on the team to get so many messages of support from their fellow Australians, ranging from Mr & Mrs Public all over the continent, through to the Prime Minister, Steve Waugh and Mark Taylor, the commander of our forces in East Timor and many of his soldiers.

“It was that sort of thing that made it special,” Eales said, and we wanted to win as much for our supporters as for ourselves.

“When we sang the national anthem at the end it was in the hope that they would be celebrating as much with us as we were celebrating for them.”

If Australian sport has a better ambassador than Eales, he is not immediately apparent. From a shaky start where the acclaim for his captaincy was not unanimous, he has developed into a universally respected leader who has developed the happy knack of nearly always finding himself in the winner’s circle, surrounded by teammates who believe in him.

Some of the most admiring words for the Wallabies came from Eales’s opposing captain, Raphael Ibanez.

“Against the All Blacks,” he said afterwards, “we were able to dominate them physically, but not against Australia. From the very beginning they were so physically intense and we lost ground to them. We were playing against an Australian team that is used to the pressure of such enormous matches, whereas we were like kids who are told, “Tomorrow you’re in the World Cup final.”

The assessment is too harsh France actually played a fine game—the odd nefarious act aside—and there were many times in the first half particularly when, if the ball had bounced differently, they could easily have scored.

“Ultimately though, no-one disputed the Wallabies were worthy winners.

It’s like the man said: L’Australie, sacré champions du monde!

Source: Sydney Morning Herald [http://www.smh.com.au/]

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