Wallabies handle the Queen with care
Dave Murray in London
November 12, 2008 09:30am
AN encounter with the Wallabies can often be bruising. So officials warned the team to handle Her Majesty with care when they met the Queen at Windsor Castle.
The advice led to unlikely scenes of burly rugby union players practicing gentle handshakes on each other in the leadup to their regal audience. ARU chief executive John O'Neill told the Queen of a previous encounter when Australia's players had not been quite so careful.
As a small child, she had been tossed in the air by an exuberant team member who had just enjoyed a long lunch. The panicked royal court was reassured that the player had the safest hands in the team after the incident in 1928.
"She had never heard the story,'' O'Neill said. "She was quick to point out that she would have been about 18 months old. She said she had no recollection of being thrown in the air. I responded I wouldn't blame her for blocking it out of the memory.''
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