Amateur days produced Tests with lots of characters

Glen Ella, right, was a victim of fan skullduggery in Perpignan in 1983 in an Australian team skippered by his brother Mark.

In 1983 I captained the Wallabies to Italy and France, which was one of the most enjoyable and equally difficult tours that I had ever been on.

We only played two matches in Italy before moving on to France, the first against an Italian selection in L’Aquila just north of Rome, which we won 26-0 and the Test match in Rovigo.

My brother Glen was awarded his second Test cap when Roger Gould withdrew from the team after aggravating a thigh injury at training.

David Campese had played fullback against the All Blacks earlier that year but we felt that he was still a little immature for such a key role and we thought that we would give Glen an opportunity against the Italians and let Campo relax a little for the heavy work ahead of us in France.

I thought that Glen played really well against Italy but the Test almost turned into a disaster for him.

An Italian winger fielded a high kick and Glen followed through to tackle him. As Glen put his arms around the Italian he felt a sharp pain in his throat and realised the winger’ elbow was sticking into him.

Glen then did what many of us would have done, he reacted by flooring the Italian with a right hook.

Immediately there were boos and jeers roaring from the local crowd as French referee Jean-Claude Yche charged up to Glen as they quickly became involved in a heated argument over the ­incident.

I had to race from 30 metres away to speak to the French referee, who I just happened to know, having adjudicated in a match in Argentina the year before when I captained a World XV against the Pumas in Buenos Aires.

If I didn’t know the referee I reckon Glen would have been sent off but I told the referee that it was an accident and he didn’t mean it and thankfully everyone calmed down and my brother stayed on the field with the Wallabies eventually going on the win 29-7.

After the rather pleasant tour of Italy, France was always going to be difficult in more ways than one, starting with the ‘Battle of Strasbourg’ against a French selection when the arrogant hosts decided to knock out Wallabies rookie No 8 Steve Tuynman, which led to an almighty all-in brawl.

The French retreated for 30 metres as we stood up for ourselves before going onto win our first match in France 19-16.

We confronted another difficult game in Perpignan in the southwest corner of France.

The surrounding region, known as the Catalans, is a rugby league stronghold and appropriately former French rugby league international Marc Bourret scored the first try of the match, which proved costly with the Wallabies losing the game by six points, 15-9.

The match in Perpignan demonstrated the extraordinary lengths the French would go to for victory.

Glen had a shocker under the high ball in that game, which was played in the afternoon, and coach Bob Dwyer and I queried him ­afterwards.

I said to Glen, “so what is your excuse for such a terrible game today”.

He said, “mate, the sun was unbelievable” which made no sense at all in the French winter.

As it turned out that there was someone at the window in a block of flats adjacent to the field shining a mirror in Glen’s eyes as he tried to catch the football.

He couldn’t see the ball at all and the television coverage of the game zoomed in on a guy with a mirror obviously pointed at Glen’s face throughout the match — it was a tough tour.

The first Test match was played in Claremont-Ferrand and as you can imagine I was a little nervous having to face French captain Jean-Pierre Rives, who along with Kiwi flanker and captain Graham Mourie, who I had the pleasure of playing against the year before, was ranked as one of the world’s leading rugby players at the time.

I did happen to notice that Rives was behaving strangely during the coin toss and he asked me which country did the coin come from.

I said it was from New Zealand because our referee was a Kiwi who asked Rives to flip the coin because where it was from wasn’t really that important at this moment in time.

The referee gave his coin to Rives and he just dropped it. It fell straight out of his hands which he did twice and after that I just looked at the referee and said that I would flick the coin.

He said, “okay, good idea” and to this day I can remember walking back to the Wallabies change room thinking ‘holy crap’, Jean-Pierre was on something, which is probably why he played extremely well in our two Test matches.

Maybe he was pumped up on painkillers because he was definitely in another world and after drawing the first Test match 15-all, we let ourselves down losing the second Test match in Paris 15-6.

Rugby in the amateur era may not have been as spectacular as it is now but the game had personalities and bucket loads of charisma and we always enjoyed the opportunity of touring the world and getting to know each other as well as our opponents.