Few realised it at the time, but the Wallabies’ heartbreaking series loss to the 1989 British and Irish Lions was the reboot Australian rugby had spent almost a century searching for.

Eternally frustrated at squandering a series they knew they should have won, the Wallabies still emerged as the biggest winners from one of the most violent series of all time.

Not only did the Australians silence their arrogant northern hemisphere detractors but they also discovered the missing ingredient for the decade of global success that followed, even though they’re still kicking themselves for letting the series slip through their fingers.

“It’s a series we should never have lost and that’s the bitter disappointment because you get one roll of the dice against those bastards,” the Wallabies captain Nick Farr-Jones told this masthead.

“If I’ve got any recollections of that Lions’ tour, and I have plenty of course, it’s that it got away from us.”

While the 1989 series is mostly remembered for the ugly on-field brawls initiated by the Lions and the clumsy blunder by David Campese that gifted the tourists a try in the deciding match, it was also the reawakening of Australian rugby, which had been losing its best Wallabies to rugby league since Dally Messenger first switched codes in 1908.

The Lions had always considered themselves superior to the Australians, even after they resorted to underhand tactics, prompting Wallabies coach Bob Dwyer to describe the tourists as the dirtiest rugby team he’d ever seen.

Branded as thugs, the Lions couldn’t have cared less about what everyone thought about their actions, with their English lock Paul Ackford boasting at the time: “When Australians start whingeing about intimidatory tactics, then you know you’ve got them on the run.”

The Lions’ captain Finlay Calder, who threw the first punch, was equally unapologetic about his side’s behaviour.

“From that moment on I genuinely believe that the Test series was won,” he said.

“They just looked at us and thought to themselves: ‘I don’t fancy this lot.‘”

DECADES OF DISDAIN

As laughable as it now seems given the shabby record of Home Nations teams in World Cups compared to the southern hemisphere giants, the Lions were once so dismissive of Australian rugby that they refused to play a stand-alone series against the Wallabies for 90 years.

Between 1899 and 1989, the only matches the Lions granted the Wallabies were during stopovers on their trips to New Zealand. And for more than two decades during that period, between 1966 and 1989, the Lions gave up on playing the Wallabies altogether, such was the disdain they had for the men in gold.

But everything changed in 1984 when the Wallabies completed the coveted grand slam for the first time – beating England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland on their home turf – while the Lions were coming under increasing political pressure to cut their ties with the Springboks.

Defying condemnation and widespread protests, the Lions went ahead with five separate tours to South Africa during the apartheid era – in 1955, 1962, 1968, 1974 and 1980 – while refusing to tour Australia.

But the Lions plans to visit South Africa again in 1986 were scuttled when the tour was cancelled because of fears it could lead to a boycott of the Commonwealth Games, taking place in Scotland the same year.

With the inaugural Rugby World Cup taking place in 1987, the future of the Lions was uncertain so they hurriedly agreed to tour Australia, albeit for a significantly reduced number of games, just 12, including three tests.

Despite the Lions’ air of superiority, the Wallabies were slight favourites to win the series despite underperforming at the World Cup, finishing fourth.

A NEW CAPTAIN AND A HISTORIC OCCASION

Dwyer had replaced Alan Jones as head coach and halfback Farr-Jones had been appointed as the new skipper after Andrew Slack retired.

But the Australians really had little idea of the scale of what taking on the combined might of the Lions entails, because most of the players had not been born the last time they played the Wallabies, even though they knew enough to realise it was a historic occasion.

Prop Dan Crowley, who also worked as an undercover policeman, made his Test debut in the opening match but said he was oblivious to just how big that series would become.

“From my point of view, I can’t recall there being as much hype around what the Lions were all about at the time,” he told this masthead.

“Bob Dwyer was the coach and so he didn’t really make a big fuss about it. I just wanted to get stuck into my first game and make sure I didn’t stuff up because I was obviously the new boy in the team.

“From a team’s perspective, we knew we weren’t going to win the battle upfront then we were going to struggle to win the battle overall.”

With a star-studded line-up that included the ‘holy trinity’ of Farr-Jones, Campese and Michael Lynagh, the Wallabies had already ticked off a number of major milestones in the 1980s.

As well as completing the grand slams, they’d beaten the All Blacks in a three-test series in New Zealand to win the Bledisloe Cup in 1986 so were reasonably confident going in against the Lions.

But there were also some worrying signs, which Farr-Jones had already detected during the World Cup and when the Wallabies lost the Bledisloe Cup on home soil in 1988.

“We were a great team in the mid 80s, obviously the Grand Slam,” Farr-Jones said.

“We also had a great year in 1986. We should have won that series 3-0 on New Zealand soil, we got a bit complacent, and the World Cup was difficult because it was played in our backyard.

“The ‘87 year was a real drop off, a real low. Bob Dwyer came back and then I became a young captain.

“Bob had never even approached me. I didn’t know Bob. He didn’t call to say, ‘Nick, I’m thinking of making you captain.’ All of a sudden. I was made captain.

“My recollections of those early years, 88, 89, was that we had a very good team, but the thing that drove me to drink was how inconsistent we could be.

“One week we could be fantastic, I think of the 1988 series against the All Blacks, and the next week we could be dreadful and I think of the Lions series, four tries to nil in the first Test and we ended up losing the series.”

FROM FAIRYTALE START TO BRUTAL REALITY

Everything was looking rosy for the Wallabies when they romped to a comprehensive 30-12 victory in the opening Test at the Sydney Football Stadium.

The match against the Lions was the Wallabies’ maiden appearance at the sparkling new venue and they could hardly have made a better first impression.

“Four tries to nil, really great rugby, great defence, so it was quite a historic match,” Farr-Jones said

“We’d been in the wilderness. For the 1987 World Cup, our matches in Sydney were at Concord Oval. To arrive at Moore Park after that two-year build, fantastic stadium against an amazing team and then just to put on four tries playing great rugby, great defence, it was the absolute fairytale start of that series for us.”

Lloyd Walker, the first Indigenous Australian to play against the Lions, scored the opening try of the series.

A skilled playmaker who learnt his trade playing alongside the magical Ella brothers at Randwick, Walker was a genius playmaker and calming influence who called the shots in the backline.

He had a blinder against the Lions but was quietly concerned the tourists had plenty of improvement in them once they figured out their best combination and had more time together.

“I was pretty excited. I was at the age of 29 so I wasn’t scared about it,” Walker said.

“I toured with the Wallabies in 1988 and we played against England and Scotland, so we kind of knew the players that we were going to play against and they’re all very good players, of course so I realised it was going to be very difficult.

“We knew we had opportunities in the first test because the British Lions are different from other teams. They need matches to get their cohesion, their teamwork and more importantly their best 15 on the field so it was good to play them early.”

Walker was right. Although the Lions had never won a series after losing the first Test, they were just getting warmed up. Under fire, Calder offered to step down but was persuaded to stay on and lead with his fists.

HEARTBREAK AND LEGACY: THE PATH TO WORLD CUP GLORY

The Lions won the second Test 19-12 in Brisbane after rattling the Wallabies by going the biff, with Calder delivering the first swing, connecting with the jaw of Farr-Jones.

Mike Teague, who started at blindside flanker, once described the match as ‘the most violent game of rugby that has ever been played.’

“There were some hard players on that tour,” he said. “Hard men and they all came together and sorted the job out.“

The Lions clinched the decider back in Sydney 19-18 in bizarre fashion with Ieuan Evans pouncing on a mixup between Campese and Greg Martin to score the go-ahead try.

Although there was time for the Wallabies to hit back, they didn’t and Campese was savaged over it.

“We knew what worked in the first Test and we knew what we didn’t do in the second from a forward pack perspective so we knew we had to meet them physically,” Crowley said.

“ And it was working until we had that tragic issue with Campo. I remember being on the field and hearing Jeff Miller screaming ‘f …” as it was unfolding, because he could see the enormity of what was happening. No-one could believe it.

“It sort of swung the momentum a fair bit and once that momentum shifts, it’s really hard to shift it back. We were playing catch-up after that and just couldn’t do enough. It was shattering.”

For all the Australian players who were involved in that series, it was a devastating end to the series, with some never playing for the Wallabies again, even though there was a silver lining and lasting legacy from the defeat.

Two years later, the Wallabies won the World Cup, beating England in the final at Twickenham.

As the winning skipper, Farr-Jones was presented with the Webb Ellis Cup by Queen Elizabeth II, while Campese was unanimously voted player of the tournament.

“It took us probably six months in the early 1990s but we changed our mindset from a team that was scoreboard focused and desperate to win to a team that understood the importance of process and that if you get the process right, the scoreboard looks after itself,” Farr-Jones said.

“I have no doubt we learnt that through the difficult losses that we had including the Lions.

“Occasionally I wake up at two in the morning with the cracks in the ceiling getting wider because we didn’t win that series.

“But we went on to win a World Cup so I sort of got over it.”