Queensland’s Wallabies left waiting during inaugural Rugby World Cup
The Rugby World Cup is going from strength to strength but the inaugural tournament in 1987 was a very different beast. Mike Colman chats with former Wallaby, QRU chairman Jeff Miller.
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The Rugby World Cup has kicked off in front of huge crowds and excellent TV ratings but it wasn’t always like that. Former Wallaby backrower and current Queensland Rugby chairman Jeff Miller played in the first tournament in 1987 and says it was a far cry from the slick global event it has grown to be over the past 32 years.
How did you feel when it became evident that the Rugby World Cup was actually going to happen and you were going to be part of it?
My initial feeling was that to be part of the inaugural tournament was something special but I never envisaged the stature that it would reach globally.
Did it live up to your expectations?
Well, all our games until we went to New Zealand for the third place play off were in Sydney at Concord Oval. It wasn’t exactly one of the world’s great stadiums. It was pretty much just a suburban club ground and the level of interest in the World Cup that you get now wasn’t there. While it was nice to be part of the tournament it was a strange feeling.
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What about the atmosphere off the field?
That was the biggest problem. We were still amateurs then so all the Queenslanders had to take time off work and sit around the hotel all day waiting for Jonesy (coach Alan Jones) to finish his radio show so we could train in the afternoon. The Sydney blokes were okay. They could keep working, so they had something to do. The rest of us were stuck in the hotel. You didn’t want to go out because training was at 4pm.
So what did you do?
Nothing. Just hung around the hotel being bored. There was a lot of dead time and I remember the Queenslanders all feeling a bit out of sorts. We felt there were double standards. The Sydney blokes were living their normal lives, going to work, seeing their family and friends and we were stuck in the Camperdown Travelodge day after day. It wasn’t a recipe for building team unity or peak performance.
You missed the opening match against England but were in the side for the next game against USA. What are your memories?
It was a long time ago. I don’t remember a great deal about the game but I do remember being in the bus driving through Sydney’s western suburbs to get to Concord Oval and thinking it all felt very odd. There was a real lack of atmosphere at the ground. There was nowhere near the buzz you’d get playing overseas.
You played in Australia’s big 33-15 win over Ireland in the quarter-final but it was the semi-final loss to France that was arguably the match of the tournament.
All I remember is Serge Blanco scoring the winning try in extra time. We thought we had it won.
There will always be debate over whether French number eight Laurent Rodriguez knocked on before passing to Blanco. Did you have a clear view of it?
I didn’t see it. I was scrambling to get across in cover. There were no TMOs in those days so if the referee said it was a try, it was a try.
What did Alan Jones have to say in the dressing room after the loss?
I honestly don’t remember. I do know that I felt pretty down but at the same time it wasn’t the end of the world. We’d lost a Test match but I guess the World Cup was so new that it didn’t have the importance it has now. We were disappointed of course but we weren’t all going, ‘oh no, we’ve lost a World Cup semi-final’. I think we all would have felt worse if we’d lost the Bledisloe Cup. I keep going back to the atmosphere at Concord Oval. It just didn’t feel like a big game should.
The French went to Auckland for the final against the All Blacks and you went to Rotorua to play Wales for third place.
No-one wanted to go. We’d just lost the semi-final in extra time, we had to go and put up with the smell of Rotorua and play Wales on a Wednesday afternoon. There wasn’t one player who was motivated. I was on the bench and when David Codey got sent off after about five minutes that was it for me. That was the end of my World Cup. And to cap it all off it was another last second loss. We couldn’t get home quick enough. It wasn’t a good few days
for the Wallabies.
At least you got to take part in Australia’s winning campaign in the UK four years later.
That was a completely different experience. The atmosphere was great, the crowds had doubled, maybe tripled, and there was huge interest on TV. It was great and it’s even bigger now. I love it, and I was right. Being part of it from the start was very special.
Originally published as Queensland’s Wallabies left waiting during inaugural Rugby World Cup