Australian fullback Ken Thornett meets the Duke of Edinburgh at Wembley. Peter Dimond is the other Kangaroo
SITTING in the mostly empty grandstands at London’s Wembley Stadium on a cold autumn night in 1963 was Irish rugby union great, Mike Gibson watching his first live game of rugby league.
The combatants were Great Britain and Australia in the First Test of what would prove a watershed tour for the Kangaroos, coached by dual international, Arthur Summons.
Australia had not wrested the ‘Ashes’ from the British on their home turf since 1912.
In 1962 the touring Lions had beaten Australia 2-1 in Australia, and it would have been a whitewash except for an after-the-hooter, sideline conversion by winger, Ken Irvine in the Third Test at the SCG.
Yet that night at Wembley Stadium, before a crowd of just 13,946, the British got a lesson in all facets of the game as Australia cruised to a 28-2 win with Reg Gasnier scoring three tries.
The other try scorers were Gasnier’s co-centre, Graeme Langlands; winger, Ken Irvine and fullback, Ken Thornett.
Interviewed after the match, Irishman, Gibson declared the Kangaroos’ backline the best he had seen in either rugby code.
The Australians showed it was no fluke with a record breaking 50-12 win in the return Test at Swinton a month later, with Irvine scoring three times, while Langlands finished with a 20 point haul from two tries and seven goals.
To be fair to Britain they lost five eighth, David Bolton to injury just 18 minutes into the match, and played with 12 men for the remaining 62 minutes under the replacement rules of the day.
But there was little doubt the 1963-64 Kangaroos were in a class of their own, even though they lost the Third Test, largely thanks to an eccentric refereeing performance by Englishman, ‘Sergeant Major’ Eric Clay.
The 50-12 win at Swinton was the highest score in an Anglo-Australian series, and the 38 point margin was also a record.
The Kangaroos won 16, lost five and drew one of their 22 matches in Britain, the biggest shock a 23-17 loss to Featherstone Rovers at Post Office Road.
In France the Kangaroos lost the First Test 8-5 in Bordeaux, but recovered to clinch the series with a 21-9 win in Toulouse and then a 16-8 win in Paris. The win in Toulouse was described by Australian journalist, Peter Muszkat as “the greatest football of the tour”.
Their only loss in 11 other tour games came at the hands of the formidable Catalans XIII, the forerunners of the current Catalans Dragons club which plays in Super League.
A match against France B scheduled for Lyon, was abandoned because of ice and snow.
Ian Walsh, who took over as captain of the Kangaroos after Summons was injured early in the tour, broke his arm in three places in a club match in France, and a steel plate had to be inserted.
On their return to Australia the Kangaroos were afforded a ticker tape parade and a civic reception by Lord Mayor of Sydney, Harry Jensen.
Hooker/prop, Noel Kelly was sent off three times on tour, “all of them pretty questionable”, but despite those setbacks he rates the experience as one of the highlights of his life in football.
Clive Churchill, coach of the 1959 Kangaroos, wrote that the ’63 side deserved the accolade ‘the greatest Australian team ever sent on an Ashes-winning mission’.
“One cannot try to differentiate between the individual players,” Churchill wrote. “There is one word to sum-up them all – great. They bewildered Britain with pace and ability.”
The players received an individual bonus of 402 pounds for the tour.
Chinchilla’s Johnny Gleeson did not play a Test, with Earl Harrison from Gilgandra preferred as five eighth. But on the next tour of Britain and France in 1967, Gleeson was first choice five eighth.
“I had a lot of injuries in ’63,” Gleeson recalled years later. “I ended up in hospital as soon as we hit London from the flight over from Australia. We were training and someone tackled me and took the scab off my shoulder where I had had the injection for travel. I lost a bit of weight and struggled a bit. But towards the end of the tour I came good. It was still a great tour and I am so proud to have been part of it.”
The 1963 Kangaroo touring squad: Arthur Summons (c), Graeme Langlands, Ken Irvine, Les Johns, Peter Dimond, Reg Gasnier, Michael Cleary, Brian Hambly, Barry Rushworth, Dick Thornett, Ken Thornett, Ken Day, Barry Muir, Kevin Smyth, Frank Stanton, Johnny Gleeson, Earl Harrison, Peter Gallagher, Noel Kelly, Jimmy Lisle, Johnny Raper, John Cleary, Paul Quinn, Ian Walsh, George Wilson, Kevin Ryan. Managers, Arthur Sparks, Jack Lynch.
About Author
Great article. That 1963-64 Kangaroo squad was one of the best Aussie Rugby League Squads to represent our Country. No big surprise poor old “Ned” getting marched 3 times on tour he played the game hard and sadly got on the wrong side of some Refs. But he was a great forward.