France’s PLANNED return to the SCG this season after a 35-year absence had to be abandoned for obvious reasons. But it still conjured up plenty of colourful memories, none more vivid than that provided in 1981 by their legendary flanker and captain Jean-Pierre Rives.
It was 1981. Australia had won the first Test in Brisbane, and 42,000 people turned up to the SCG hoping for a Wallaby clean sweep. Rives, courageous beyond the call, was determined that should not happen.
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“He took the field looking like Quasimodo,” recalled the Australian fullback that day, Paul McLean.
“One shoulder was about six inches lower than the other, and the strapping and padding holding it together gave his body a weird, contorted shape.”
Rives had dislocated his shoulder in a tour match against Queensland, missed the first Test, but as tour captain decided he had to play the second, even if it meant doing so with one arm hanging useless by his side.
France went down 24-14 that day despite their captain’s best efforts, but the raw courage that pushed him through 80 minutes won the respect and admiration of the Rugby world... not least the Wallabies.
Tony Shaw was the Australian captain, and was not one to sympathise with a wounded opponent.
“We made it as hard as we could for him, but he just didn’t flinch,” Shaw recalled. “He gave the impression he would have died for France if he had to. It was an inspiring feat for him just to stay on the field, but he threw himself at everything.”
Rives was an extraordinary player who did many great things for French Rugby, but it is doubtful if his commitment to the cause was ever more in evidence than it was that day.
McLean, watching from fullback, was simply in awe of him. “Clearly he should not have played given the injury he had,” McLean said.
“But as captain he felt compelled to give it a go, and once he had made that decision he just would not give up. He threw himself into rucks and tackles with one arm just hanging by his side. It was awesome stuff.”
Rives’ French team had run through the Five Nations championship unbeaten six months earlier, so Australia’s series win was important.
But Rives’ effort was something else, and for me even now stands as the most lasting memory of France’s five appearances over the years at the SCG.
When the first French team visited in 1961, I was an 18-year-old rookie in my first year covering Rugby.
Michel Crauste’s team was the first individual European nation to tour. The Australian captain was the inimitable Ken Catchpole, in his first Test season at 21 and captain to boot.
The match was played in a bog. When an east coast low hits Sydney, the rain is something else, and on an SCG then boasting a Bulli soil cricket pitch the field was like glue.
Yet the French flyhalf Pierre Albaladejo managed to send two drop goals soaring between the posts as the centrepiece of a 15-8 win.
In those days the Rugby balls in use were four-panelled laced leather with an inflatable rubber bladder, and when they were wet they felt like bricks. Yet Albaladejo still managed to live up to his nickname of ‘Monsieur le Drop’.
In five visits to the SCG until the last in 1986, this was the only match the French won. They went down by a point to a John Ballesty field goal in 1968, drew 14-14 in a vicious match in 1972, and were comfortably beaten in 1981 and 1986 by Australian teams on the rise.
The 1968 match was an extraordinary affair in which the French managed to mount such amazing backline brilliance that they ended up confusing themselves.
Key to it was the flyhalf Jo Maso, an extraordinary player of rare attacking gifts who so bamboozled the Australians they simply didn’t know what he was going to do next.
“I chased him all afternoon and couldn’t really get near him,” recalls Ballesty, his opposite number that day. “Trouble for the French was his team-mates had trouble keeping up too, and we just kept making desperate cover tackles to shut them down. Really, they should have thrashed us.”
In the event, a late Ballesty dropped goal sealed the match 11-10. It was a good win at a low period in Australian Rugby.
The 1972 SCG encounter was an unhappy, violent affair in which the French tactics seemed to focus on physical destruction.
The brilliant Australian flyhalf Russell Fairfax was late tackled a couple of times, rendered unconscious and stretchered from the field. He wasn’t the only one as the French punched and kicked their way through the game.
Fairfax virtually jumped off the stretcher to return to the field, and could remember nothing of the game afterwards. Still can’t. But he made an heroic tackle two minutes from the end which should have won Australia the game.
French centre Jean-Pierre Lux was diving for a try when Fairfax flew at him, managed to get him on his back so he could not ground the ball and the pair crossed the dead-ball line.
Regrettably, both Lux and Fairfax had significantly more speed available to them than referee Warwick Cooney, who arrived somewhat later to award a try that thousands in the crowd knew had not been scored. It turned a 14-10 Australian win into a draw.
By 1981, both France and Australia had made some changes to the way they approached the game. A national coaching system set up in Australia became a world model, and improved Wallaby football enormously.
The French too, under new coach Jacques Fouroux, had introduced more discipline into their game, abandoning some of the helter-skelter backplay that had made them so unpredictable in favour of a more structured forward approach.
This was significant when the teams clashed again in 1986, their last SCG encounter prior to their scheduled visit before it was moved to Suncorp.
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It was the year before the first Rugby World Cup, and the Wallabies were on a high after a Grand Slam triumph in Britain 18 months earlier. Later that year they had a stunning Bledisloe Cup triumph in New Zealand.
They were already World Cup favourites and this match was a vital stepping stone.
France had shared the Five Nations championship and were formidable opponents with match-winning backs like Philippe Sella and Serge Blanco.
But the Australians mounted a dominant forward effort that many rated the best of the era . . . perhaps of any era to that point . . . and they simply shut France out 27-14, despite a three tries to one deficit that distorted the realities of the game.
The midfield defence was tight and aggressive, and with Michael Lynagh’s boot dictating matters and the likes of David Campese to add necessary magic, it was a complete Australian performance.
The pack was essentially that which had won the British Grand Slam, and the improvement suggested they had the initial RWC 1987 well within their grasp.
In the event, a late semi-final try to Serge Blanco a year later tipped them out of the World Cup.
They could justifiably claim some hard luck. But the Sydney performance of 1986 remains one of Australia’s best . . . a fitting bookend to the history of France-Australia Tests on the SCG.
