Kangaroo Tour Memories – The 1982 Invincibles
The 2025 Australian Kangaroos will play a three-test series in the UK in the coming weeks. Coach Kevvie Walters and his squad are preparing for the First Test at London’s famous Wembley Stadium. This is the first Ashes Tour in 22 years.
As I walked past my bookshelf recently, Mark Flanagan’s 2019 book The Invincibles: the inside story of the 1982 Kangaroos, the team that changed rugby forever seemed to leap out at me. And that is without looking at the brilliant photo of a long-haired Peter Sterling, in his distinctive Kangaroos jersey, three-quarter length sleeves and all, on the cover!
I’ve been flicking through the book lately. Flanagan’s work is certainly comprehensive (320 pages), including detailed interviews with administrators and players, giving a wonderful context of rugby league, particularly in Great Britain, at the time.
As a teenager in 1982 – post the inspiration of Raelene Boyle, Robert de Castella and others at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games – for a sports obsessed Year Ten boarder at Concordia College, Toowoomba, the Kangaroo tour was, as Roy Slaven and HG Nelson would say – a case of “too much sport being barely enough!”
As a just turned fifteen-year-old, of course I was not fully aware at the time of the significance of this tour.
A Kangaroo Tour comprising 15 games in England, followed by seven in France, including Two Tests v the Frogs, was reason to wait for the paperboy to deliver the Toowoomba Chronicle to the dorms to read the match reports or, once the Christmas holidays had started, reason to wait for Mum to get home from town (Kingaroy) with the Courier Mail to read the latest about the rugby league tourists.
In those days, a rugby league tragic such as myself also hung out for the Rugby League Week Summer Special. What a great time to be alive!
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And how different was the rugby league landscape in 1982?
There was no NRL, there were the NSWRL and the QRL competitions – the Brisbane club competition was pre-Broncos (1988).
Canberra and Illawarra played their first seasons in the NSWRL Winfield Cup (yes, the tobacco sponsorship era) in 1982.
Parramatta won the 1982 NSWRL premiership as part of their three peat, with Eric Grothe, Steve ‘the zip zip man’ Ella, Brett Kenny, Peter Sterling, John Muggleton and the legendary Ray Price named in the touring party.
The Brisbane club competition, the BRL, was won by the star-studded Wynnum-Manly for the first time. The boys from the bay had a team list including Colin Scott, Gene Miles, and captain of the side, Kangaroo tourist Rod Morris, a tough front rower. The Seagulls defeated Mal Meninga’s Souths team 17-3 at Lang Park.
There was also a 14-team Queensland Winfield State League competition at the time. The eight Brisbane clubs were joined by six country sides: Gold Coast, Ipswich, Toowoomba, Wide Bay, Central Queensland, and North Queensland.
Many of the State League teams were sponsored by Kentucky Fried Chicken, so a memory of the old State League is certainly the jerseys with Colonel Sanders’ head emblazoned on the front.
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Toowoomba playing in the State League meant we could sign out from the boarding house after Sunday Chapel and ride out bikes to the Athletic Oval (Clive Berghoffer Stadium) to watch some matches, regardless of the weather. I do recall my old brown Concordia College blazer being absolutely soaked in a tropical downpour on one occasion and wondering (more so panicking!), ‘Would my blazer shrink, smell, be ruined? And how would I explain this to my mother?’
Note: My mother, who had coined the phrase about rugby league ‘how can you be interested in that stupid, rough game?’
Rohan Hancock, a typically tough, country forward from the Toowoomba Wattles club, was a Kangaroo tourist.
The 1982 Kangaroo tourists, the Invincibles, were the first team to go through both England and France undefeated.
Noted rugby league historian Tony Collins wrote the foreword for Mark Flanagan’s book. Collins observed:
‘The 1982 Kangaroos were not only the greatest rugby league team to play the game, they were also one of the greatest sports teams of all time. Max Krilich and his men belong in the pantheon alongside Pele’s 1970 Brazil, Dave Gallagher’s 1905 All Blacks and America’s 1992 Olympic basketball dream team.’
High praise indeed.
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So, before enterprise bargaining, players’ workload agreements, the players’ association and the like, this team played their first game of 22 at Hull Kingston Rovers on 5 October 1982, the first of six lead-up games against club teams before the First Test, and their final game in France on 18 December.
Half of the squad played a game in Perth before departing Australia whilst the remainder of the team travelled via Papua New Guinea.
I remember watching many games of both the 1982 and 1986 (the return of the invincibles) tours on television. The short in-goal areas, the distinctive accents of the commentators Ray French and Alex Murphy, the singing crowds, as well as many dubious refereeing decisions come to mind.
Quite a character was the French referee, Mr Julien Rascagneres!
Google can provide team lists, scores, and other details, such as the lop-sided penalty counts.
Mrs Hansen and I first travelled overseas together in 1998. Heidi (my wife) has many exceptional qualities, including tolerance. She has slightly more interest in rugby league than Audrey Hansen (my mother) had in the 1980s. However, the key word in the previous sentence is ‘slightly’!
As part of our European adventure in 1998, we did take a train to Leeds, stay a couple of days in Halifax, visit the birthplace of rugby league in Huddersfield, as well as squeezing in a drive to Wigan.
Funnily enough, Heidi rates experiences in places such as New York City, Paris. Florence and Venice more highly than the George Hotel in historic Huddersfield!
We stayed with a pen pal I met through ‘the Bible’, Rugby League Week. We had corresponded for several years. Jacqui and her husband Steve generously took us through the rugby league sites of Yorkshire.
Jacqui was a Wigan girl and was, in hindsight, seemingly part of a pattern of my various interactions with members the opposite sex in that era: I wrote to Jacqui more often than she wrote to me! Fast forward to 2025 and I am still friends on Facebook with Jacqui’s mother!
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1982: The Invincibles, what a different tour to Kevvie Walters’ men of 2025.
What a great time, a great era to look back on. Malcolm Fraser was the Prime Minister. INXS released their brilliant album ‘Shabooh Shoobah’, Robert de Castella, Raelene Boyle, Tracey Wickham and numerous others had inspired us at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games, the ‘friendly games’.
Great McCaffery’s bus trips from Toowoomba to Brisbane made seeing some athletics events live, rather than on ABC TV.
I had the VHS tapes of both the 1982 and 1986 Kangaroo tours. They may be in a box back in Brisbane, or they may not have survived previous culls.
YouTube can provide what VHS once supplied:
Rugby League – “1982 Invincibles” – Kangaroos Tour of Great Britan ( Undefeated )
I have several Kangaroo Tour books on my shelves back in Brisbane. Three books with me here in the beautiful wine country I could refer to for this trip down memory lane:
Flanagan’s book;
as well as by the rugby league doyen, the prolific Ian Heads (1994) The Kangaroos: the saga of rugby league’s great tours, and
Steve Haddan (2016) Our Game: the celebration of Brisbane rugby league 1909-1987.
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The Rugby League Project website is an absolute goldmine of rugby league records:
Kangaroos Tour 1982 Series – Game 1 – Hull Kingston Rovers 10 lost to Australia 30 – RLP
Here’s to a great 2025 Kangaroo Tour, albeit very much a contrast to the odyssey of the historic 1982 Invincibles, the team that ‘changed rugby (league) forever’.
Barossa Valley Red Wine of the Week
Ian Schubert was a 1982 Kangaroo tourist.
I am unable to verify any links (or not) between former fullback-utility player, then NRL salary cap auditor, with this magnificent cellar door on Roennfeldt Road, Marananga.
Schubert Estate The Hatchling 2021 Shiraz
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About Russel Hansen
Russel Hansen Has worked in schools for over thirty years – as a teacher, coach, coach educator, sports coordinator and in pastoral care roles. Whilst at Brisbane Boys’ College as Director of Athletics, he led teams to six GPS premierships in track and field, and cross country. He has coached (athletics) at all levels from school to international. His squad at the University of Queensland (to January 2023) included Lachlan Kennedy OLY, Paris 4x100m relay runner, Australian record holder. He is married to Heidi, a Primary school principal, and is father to two adult daughters. Twitter: @Russel_Hansen
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RITV, we’ll have to do an ‘in your days, in my days’ piece about our experiences at boarding school. We were there 15 years apart and it sounds like you had more ‘freedoms’ than we did. Now, where are my old “Concordian’ magazines/yearbooks? Maybe even a rendition of the old school song? House warcries?
Yes Ian
Concordia Memorial College (CMC) for me: 1980 – 1984
My old school mates I caught up with last October – 40-year class of 1984 reunion – NRL grand final weekend – seem to remember far more shenanigans than I could recall – locking the short boy in the front of classroom cupboard during after dinner study, and the like!
There are definitely stories there to be told-embellished-and so on!
Happy rugby league
RITV looks like a good book.. Thanks for alerting me to it in such an engaging manner.
Thanks Russel,. Who ca forget Rex Mossop’s commentary of these Kangaroo Tours.
He was also an ex Kangaroo player.
Barry: yes, ‘The Invincibles’ is a good book! Flanagan goes into good detail, describing the rise of Australian rugby league (eg: Jack Gibson’s influence, as well as improved fitness, and so on) then examines the response in England – it’s a really good read. recommended!
Thanks for the feedback!
John: yes: Rex Mossop – a dual international? definitely a character in the commentary box! The Moose!!