Wayne Smith | June 18, 2009

Article from: The Australian

IT won't so much be a stroll down memory lane as a painfully hard slog when the Wallabies in November attempt to become the first Australian side in a quarter of a century to complete a Grand Slam tour of the UK and Ireland.

Not since Andrew Slack's legendary 1984 team achieved the feat has a Grand Slam -- victories over England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales -- even been possible.

Scheduling difficulties, the four-yearly staging of the World Cup and the fact that the All Blacks and Springboks were viewed as bigger drawcards meant that no Wallabies side after Slack's got the chance to line-up the four home unions in a row.

Indeed, only yesterday did the Grand Slam tour officially make its way on to the Wallabies' calendar, after the final piece of the jigsaw, a Test against England at Twickenham on November 7, fell into place.
The match became possible when the International Rugby Board pulled together a complex rescue package to help the impoverished Fijian Rugby Union cope with a $486,000 deficit and the loss of its major sponsor.
Under the arrangement, a scheduled England Test against Fiji on November 28 will be replaced by a Fiji-US match. Fiji will receive a cut of the Wallabies-England gate, and Australia has agreed to play Fiji in a one-off Test on June 5 next year at a venue to be determined.

The Springboks might hold the record for the most Grand Slams (four) but it has been nearly half a century -- 48 years to be precise -- since they last succeeded, most recently coming to grief against Ireland and England on their 2004 tour. It took the All Blacks until 1978 before they registered their first and it was not until 2005 and last year that their second and third slams followed.

Slack was delighted yesterday that Stirling Mortlock's side would have the chance to possibly follow in the footsteps of Mark Ella, David Campese, Michael Lynagh and a host of other Wallaby greats from the Alan Jones-coached 1984 squad.

"You'd like to think they could put a 'W' down against Scotland, but it's going to be a hard ask to also beat England, Wales and Ireland, the Six Nations champions," Slack said.

"There's a lot of talk about this era and that era, but that's all by the by. What's exciting about this is that it gives today's Wallabies a chance to do something fresh and rare in their rugby lives.

"It's a bit like a British Lions tour that comes around once every 12 years -- you probably only get one shot at a Grand Slam in your entire career. Having said that, James O'Connor is only 18 so he might get four shots the way he's going."

The 1984 Grand Slam triumph, with Mark Ella scoring a try in every Test, excited interest across Australia that extended way beyond the rugby community. "If you're talking about what was more difficult, the 1986 Bledisloe Cup series win in New Zealand was definitely harder," Slack said. "But at a time when there wasn't a World Cup, for Australia it was the next best thing."

Mortlock described the opportunity of the November tour as "massive". "I was only seven years old at the time of the last one. Consequently, I don't have any real memories of that tour, although I obviously have seen television footage of Mark Ella, Nick Farr-Jones and the like carving up," the Wallabies skipper said.


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...015651,00.html