Only once in Stirling Mortlock’s 80 Tests as a Wallaby did he call out another player in the hubbub that always precedes a massive Test like this one at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
It was 2007. It was in the lead-up to the last Bledisloe Cup Test played on hallowed turf more accustomed to the deeds of Test cricketers and AFL players.
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It was to be a forecast played out in front of more than 79,000 yelling, invested fans.
This may just be the fourth time the Wallabies have faced the All Blacks at the MCG but there has been no shortage of high drama, emotion and memorable moments.
And, did we mention, success.
The Wallabies have a 2-1 record over the All Blacks at the MCG. It’s a little like an Irishman claiming to have the wood on the All Blacks because he was in Chicago for the one-off at Soldier Field for 2016’s hoodoo-busting triumph.
You claim every stat of advantage, right? Of course, you do.
Mortlock was Wallabies skipper in 2007. His teasing words weren’t delivered as anything resembling cockiness.
How could they be with the Wallabies having lost their previous five Tests against the All Blacks, the same form line that exists for Saturday night.
“Having had my Test apprenticeship on the wing before playing outside centre, I got to understand how much of a hot spot outside centre is in defence,” Mortlock recalled.
“It is not an easy position. You come up to shut down an attack or link with your winger on occasions in defence.”
The All Blacks were playing Luke McAlister at outside centre. Talented as he was, he was still a fill-in playing out of position, Mortlock prodded at his pre-Test media conference.
“It was pretty mild but I said if we didn’t test out that position we weren’t doing our jobs,” Mortlock said.
Come kick-off and a full-blooded Test was on. The Kiwis jumped to 15-6 by half-time.
Into the final 10 minutes, the Test was still up for grabs. Mortlock took a powerful inside running angle when McAlister drifted and left a hole.
You make the most of such rare fracture points in a tight Test. Mortlock steamed 35m before finding replacement back Scott Staniforth backing up on the inside. Wallabies 20, All Blacks 15. A memorable upset.
Players stepping up like that is exactly the firepower that Eddie Jones wants to build into the current Wallabies.
“It’s always big moments that make games. More and more, we see big moments in games dictate maybe 10-15 minutes of play,” Jones said.
“In the NZ-South Africa game, the Springboks barely touched the ball in the first 20 minutes. You’ve got to be able to withstand the brunt of that, find yourself and go again.”
There’s also a change in psyche within Australian Rugby that Jones feels he needs to overhaul.
He might have led five winning Wallabies sides against the All Blacks in 11 Tests between 2001-05 but the win rate is a miserable 15 per cent (three-from-20 Tests) since losing the 2015 Rugby World Cup final.
“The psyche is one thing we are trying to change, of going after them. Get on the front foot and go after them … and who can we go after,” Jones said with the tempo rising in his voice.
When Rugby Australia made the bold call on the MCG to host its first Bledisloe Cup match in 1997, the public responded. A stunning turnout of 90,119 fans for just the second Test staged in Melbourne for 36 years greeted teams led by John Eales and Sean Fitzpatrick.
The All Blacks were never threatened in winning 33-18.
Fullback Matt Burke remembers the occasion well and the postscript. There were so many Kiwis in the crowd that the noise might have come from a corner of Auckland when Lord Bledisloe’s silverware was held aloft.
Fast forward 12 months to July, 1998 and it was a different Wallabies side and a different Burke for another colossal conflict at the MCG.
A groin injury had hobbled him throughout 1997. His NSW Waratahs teammates had not let him off lightly when he carried a few extra kilos into pre-season training for 1998.
Burke recalls being dubbed ‘The Don’ because his weight and skinfolds measurement – 99kg and 99mm – resembled Don Bradman’s Test batting average. Ouch.
Burke’s silky running and goal kicking were back on song for 1998.
This time, the Wallabies won a memorable 24-16 decision over the All Blacks at the MCG, the first over the Kiwis in four years.
The headline writers had a field day…BURKE 24, ALL BLACKS 16.
He had scored all the points with two tries and the kicks that mattered. He’d set the tone on defence too with a big early tackle on Walter Little. The Wallabies tackled superbly and came on strong from an 8-0 deficit.
Skipper John Eales reflected that the Wallabies had almost done an All Blacks on the All Blacks by absorbing the onslaught and throwing one of their own at the Kiwis.
Before the Test, Burke had spelt it out himself in a newspaper interview as he related in his book, Matthew Burke: A Rugby Life: “The keys are not to be intimidated, to play your own game as planned and not to be sucked into theirs … and to play for every last one of the 80 minutes.”
Such a viewpoint is as current in 2023 as it was 25 years ago.
In 1998, it didn’t matter that the Wallabies were wearing a jersey of gold with a jarring green and white triangle.
“One of my best Tests in the worst jersey,” Burke recalled with a laugh.
“Great memories. A lot of people were making a thing about me scoring all the points. In my on-field interview I thanked everyone in the team for making it possible, the front-row, the backrow, ‘Greegs’ (George Gregan) and ‘Bernie’ (Steve Larkham) for playing great in the halves and so on.
“I think the only person I didn’t thank was Daniel Herbert and he’d thrown me the last pass for a try. He saw me and said, ‘Burkie, what was that? Thanks’.”
The MCG itself had a presence which Burke has not forgotten.
“Seeing the ground, you just get hit by the size. You do have to rejig your bearings a bit as a kicker for touch too (with sideline markings in the middle of a vast arena). Normally, at a rectangular ground, your target might be two or three rows back in the seating,” he said.
There is another magnetic element to the MCG which Burke felt again years later when attending a Boxing Day cricket Test with mates.
“Players do have an idea of the history of the grounds they play at and how the Wallabies fare there. There’s the Olympic history and the big Tests when you play at Stadium Australia, you know of the great record at Suncorp Stadium.
“With the MCG, there’s that rich history in so many sports. You do understand it and you do want your team to etch their own names in that history.
“That win at the MCG in 1998 got us back on the horse. It was a significant Test for the Wallabies and what was to come.”
