Gold wows Wallabies 100 years after event

Greg Growden Chief Rugby Correspondent | October 17, 2008

It is only the size of a 20 cent piece - but considering its impact at yesterday's Wallabies training session, it might as well have been as big as Australia's largest gold nugget.

Test players and officials flocked around as one of Australian rugby's most treasured items - the 1908 Olympic gold medal won by the first Wallabies side - made a rare public appearance. All were immediately struck by how small it was. The Beijing Olympic gold medals won by Libby Trickett, who was also there yesterday, looked like gold frisbees in comparison.

The glitter at yesterday's final major training session before the team heads off on its tour of Hong Kong and Europe in 10 days was to remind the Wallabies of the significance of the final match of their season. After Tests against New Zealand, Italy, England, France and Wales, the Wallabies will line up at Wembley on December 3 to finish off the tour with a match against the Barbarians to commemorate Australian rugby's Olympic success 100 years earlier.

The family of Tom "Rusty" Richards, one of the stars of the first Wallabies tour of 1908-09, had been approached by the Australian Rugby Union, and a proud Jim Menck arrived at training yesterday with his grandfather's medal in hand. And with it came stories of how vastly different Olympic success was treated then and now.

While the 2008 Wembley clash will be accompanied by the customary fanfare - with the Barbarians team taking it so seriously they have selected a virtual World XV that could well trounce the Wallabies - 100 years earlier, there was little fuss about the match in which the Australians won gold.

The 1908 game was a virtual afterthought - a lopsided non-event played alongside a bathing pool.

Rugby was introduced at the 1900 Paris Olympics, but failed to capture the public's imagination. The 1908 event struggled to get off the ground, with Scotland and Ireland ignoring their invitations. The Welsh said they had better things to do, while South Africa and New Zealand filed the Olympics in the "too hard" basket.

When the deadline for entries arrived, only France had put their hands up. The closing date was extended for six weeks, prompting England and Australia - who were on an extensive tour of Britain at the time - to enter. Then France withdrew, meaning there would be just one game - between Australia and Cornwall, chosen by the Rugby Football Union to represent Britain.

The final was played at Shepherd's Bush, next to a 100-metre concrete swimming pool, surrounded by netting to catch flying balls and stray players. Huge mattresses were spread along the rim of the pool to prevent injury to any player who fell in, while men with nets attached to long poles fished the ball out when it went over the barrier, into touch or into the water.

With the Cornwall XV - described by one newspaper as an "inglorious" bunch - plainly no match for their opponents, Australia won easily, scoring seven tries in their 32-3 triumph. Richards later wrote that the Olympic final had been eminently forgettable. It was played on a dull, foggy afternoon and was not helped by the ball often being "kicked into the large swimming pool, and coming out sodden and waterlogged".

It also appears the victory did not greatly excite the 1908 Wallabies. Richards did not even attend the medal presentation, which took place at a function at the Waldorf Hotel in Aldwych. At the time, there was a kerfuffle about the number of free meals the Wallabies had partaken of on that long tour, and many players stayed away to avoid being told off by management. The bright lights of London were also a lure.

But someone that night picked up Rusty Richards's medal, and duly passed it on to the illustrious forward. For many decades, the family has looked after it, until the gong took pride of place at Daceyville yesterday. The 2008 Wallabies ogled it, and then, inspired by gold, enthusiastically ran around and around a training paddock for an hour or so.