Friendships, memories and funny stories remembered from Queen's rugby trip in Australia forty years ago

The majority of the team met up recently for a weekend of celebration and to swap stories.

The opening paragraph in the souvenir booklet printed to commemorate their exploits in 1984 states: ‘In the summer of 1984, 25 men steeped forward to undertake a highly dangerous mission, For reasons still unclear to this day they decided to fly to the other side of the world in order to tackle the might of southern hemisphere rugby.”

The Belfast students certainly faced the might of the southern hemisphere, in a game against Sydney Universities a certain Nick Farr-Jones was playing for the host team.

Seven years later the scrum half captained the Wallabies to their first World Cup success by beating England at Twickenham.

Before Queen’s took on Nick Farr Jones and his colleagues just getting to Australia was an adventure as hooker Stephen Scott explained.

“It is hard to believe that 40 years has past since we headed off in 1984 on a certain odyssey as some of us would refer to it for two reasons,” he recalled.

“We went with the help of Gulliver’s Travels who were based in England. We were a university so we didn’t have much money and we had to raise it, they got us on this airline Garuda which is the Indonesia carrier and we basically landed anywhere these guys could see.

“We had various stop over Frankfurt, Dubai, it took us nearly 36 hours to get to Australia.

“We arrived in Australia and the itinerary was a bit trying. We arrived in Sydney, checked into our hotel and had a training session after travelling for 36 hours.

“There was a hill up to the hotel and prop David Elliott got a taxi back so that summed up our fitness because we were absolutely knackered.

“We then went to see Australia against New Zealand in the Bledisloe Cup at Sydney Cricket Ground.

“That didn’t help us in our first match the next day as we were 30 odd points up at half-time and lost by six points, that was the start of the trip.”

Scott commented on the style of rugby played in Australia back then and how they learned so much from every game they played.

“Their brand of rugby was very impressive, we learned very quickly in that first match no matter who you tackled the ball ended up out on the wing, the Australian way was to keep the ball alive and attack it was pretty exciting,” he added.

“It was a harsh tour, we played six very hard matches, the hospitality was great at the university of New South Wales, there are many stories and incidents of great fun.

“Rugby was an amateur game in those days and we made the most of it, being from Ireland the Australians took to us quite well.

“The social activities took off even more when we went up to Queensland because they had played us in Belfast in 1983 and we knew a lot of the guys quite well. We lost narrowly to them and then we played Australian Universities.

“One local newspaper built the game as ‘Queen’s University Belfast looking for their first win not surprising as their tour has been one hectic round of social events and parties’.

“We gave Australia Universities a good game but came second, then the tour organisers excelled again as somebody thought it would be a good idea to take an 11-hour bus trip from Brisbane to Newcastle, we played a match there as well.

“We played Sydney University and came up against a number of Wallabies including the great Nick Farr-Jones who rivalled our scrum half Rob Brady, and they resumed that later in the year when he got on the touring Australia team.

“We played on a pitch against Sydney University that was like a brick and it was 26/27 degrees. It was very enjoyable but unfortunately we got beaten.

“We went into Port Hacking, they entertained us with a massive beach party and two of the guys got into scuba gear and came back with a load of lobsters so we were sitting eating them on the beach.

“All in all, the rugby was great, it was very hard, we learnt a lot and played some good rugby but we were exposed. The Wallabies came over and showed us in the northern hemisphere that we were behind the pace.

“A lot of guys picked up on that and Phil Matthews who was our No8 went on to be Ireland captain, we had a great time, and they were great guys.”

Queen’s were going through a transition period as the likes of David Irwin, Trevor Ringland and Nigel Carr had left the club but nobody had told the Australian media and a national broadcaster turned up at the airport to see the team touchdown and to cover one match live on television.

Scott continued: “Queensland University had toured and played Queen’s 1st, 2nd’s and U20’s, then Australian Universities came over and we played them under the lights at Ravenhill and they thought there would have been guys from the previous team when we went over.

“In Australia after you graduated you still played for the university, where as when you completed your degree at Queen’s you couldn’t play anymore that was one of the challenges we had.

“The David Irwin’s, the Ringland’s, Chippy Rainey, Ian and Ali Moles, Kenny Hooks, that great back line had gone so it was a rebuilding phase.

“We had some good players as Davy Elliot went on to play for Ulster, Rob Brady was Ulster scrum half and David Marrs got some Ulster caps.

“We wish Hugh McCaughey good luck at Ulster Rugby as CEO, we want him to do well and he has a big job on his hands but we’re 100% behind him.

“Hopefully Ulster rugby under his guidance can rebuild and get back to where we want to be.”

It may have been 40 years ago but when the boys in Royal Blue get together it seems like yesterday.

“It’s truly incredible, there is one guy I haven’t seen in 38 or 39 years and others, but we just pick up we recognise each other and talk about the tour,” he beamed.

“In the professional game and even the club game now you don’t get that camaraderie that we were lucky to enjoy.”