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Sydney Morning Herald
6 days ago
- Sport
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘I ran as fast as I've ever run': Inside the Wallabies' 1963 Ellis Park victory
Wolfe took his place beside 65,000 South Africa fans at Ellis Park and remembers that few of them were prepared for what would happen. 'The South Africans were, how can I put it, just so confident that they didn't expect it [a Wallabies win],' Wolfe said. 'Even during the club games or the provincial games, they were always quietly confident and didn't expect us to win anything. 'I remember the crowd at Ellis Park was electric. It was very dry conditions. Apart from the altitude, it was just a perfect day.' Williams was a renowned sprinter, having missed the 1962 rugby season to train with Australia's Empire Games squad. Randwick's commitment to running rugby had given him a licence to take risks and use his speed, and when he saw the hard field at Ellis Park, he knew an Australian victory was possible. 'The day we played them in Johannesburg, the ground was sort of yellow in colour, the grass was very thin, and it was a very hard surface, which suited me for running, because I liked the harder ground to run on,' Williams said. 'I also remember when we came onto the ground to play the game, we all lined up and they sang the South African national anthem, but didn't let us sing ours, and that fired us up a bit.' Williams' fellow winger, Jim Boyce, was similarly stunned by the South African decision not to play the Australian anthem. 'There were big crowds singing, it was just a huge volume of noise singing their anthem, and then there was nothing,' Boyce recalled. 'We were absolutely astounded by that decision not to play our anthem. Now, I can understand why they wouldn't play it, because our anthem at that point in time was God Save the Queen, and that would have created all kinds of problems in South Africa. But we would have been more than happy to hear Waltzing Matilda. 'It sort of rippled along the line that they're not going to play our anthem, and it just galvanised everyone to [perform at] another level.' The Wallabies were also spurred on at Ellis Park by a brilliant performance from fullback Terry Casey, who kicked a conversion from touch, a penalty goal and a 40-metre drop goal, helped on its way by the thin air. Williams still remembers scoring his side's lone try that afternoon. 'It all happened so quickly, but it was a perfect try, because it started off with a lineout,' Williams said. 'Jim Boyce threw the ball into the lineout – and we had a terrific lineout forward, Rob Heming, who is no longer with us – he deflected the ball down to Peter Criddle, and Criddle went forward and turned his back on the opposition and passed the ball back to Dick Marks, who took off. 'I knew he [Marks] was going to pass the ball to me – he gave a perfect pass to me, and I just couldn't believe how good it was. 'I ran as fast as I've ever run down that sideline. There were four defenders coming across to get me, but I actually had enough speed to get away from them and get the ball down in the corner. 'It was a sensational time. I can't believe it happened so quickly. It's amazing, to be honest with you.' At the final whistle, Williams watched the South African team chair Wallabies captain John Thornett off the field on their shoulders in a gesture of sportsmanship. The celebrations lasted long into the night in the Australian team hotel. 'They didn't think they were going to be beaten, but they took it very well,' Williams remembered. 'They were a pretty polished side, and at the time they were one of the best sides going in rugby. 'But they were very, very good about it, and we had a good time in the sheds after the game and back at the hotel. One of our players got up on the desk in the hotel, and we all sang Waltzing Matilda, including the hotel staff.' Although the Wallabies were defeated in the final Test 22-6 in Port Elizabeth to leave the series locked at 2-2, the team was greeted in Sydney by 20,000 fans, who lined the streets for a ticker tape parade to mark their achievement. Gordon Bray covered his first Wallabies Test for the ABC in 1976 against France and has written extensively about the 1963 tour in his book The Immortals of Australian Rugby Union. Bray believes the victory in Johannesburg still stands up as one of the Wallabies' greatest, 62 years later. 'It's got to be right at the summit of Wallaby victories to win at altitude,' he said. 'The fact that we haven't won there for 62 years lets you know how hard it was. Loading 'I mean, the All Blacks really struggled to win there – they couldn't win a series in South Africa until the game went professional – so that's how hard it is. 'That Australian team [of 1963] didn't have the size of the South Africans up front, but they had brilliant players, and the way we played the game, the intelligence of the Australian team, really applies today. I think, that's the Australian way of playing ...
The Age
6 days ago
- Sport
- The Age
‘I ran as fast as I've ever run': Inside the Wallabies' 1963 Ellis Park victory
Wolfe took his place beside 65,000 South Africa fans at Ellis Park and remembers that few of them were prepared for what would happen. 'The South Africans were, how can I put it, just so confident that they didn't expect it [a Wallabies win],' Wolfe said. 'Even during the club games or the provincial games, they were always quietly confident and didn't expect us to win anything. 'I remember the crowd at Ellis Park was electric. It was very dry conditions. Apart from the altitude, it was just a perfect day.' Williams was a renowned sprinter, having missed the 1962 rugby season to train with Australia's Empire Games squad. Randwick's commitment to running rugby had given him a licence to take risks and use his speed, and when he saw the hard field at Ellis Park, he knew an Australian victory was possible. 'The day we played them in Johannesburg, the ground was sort of yellow in colour, the grass was very thin, and it was a very hard surface, which suited me for running, because I liked the harder ground to run on,' Williams said. 'I also remember when we came onto the ground to play the game, we all lined up and they sang the South African national anthem, but didn't let us sing ours, and that fired us up a bit.' Williams' fellow winger, Jim Boyce, was similarly stunned by the South African decision not to play the Australian anthem. 'There were big crowds singing, it was just a huge volume of noise singing their anthem, and then there was nothing,' Boyce recalled. 'We were absolutely astounded by that decision not to play our anthem. Now, I can understand why they wouldn't play it, because our anthem at that point in time was God Save the Queen, and that would have created all kinds of problems in South Africa. But we would have been more than happy to hear Waltzing Matilda. 'It sort of rippled along the line that they're not going to play our anthem, and it just galvanised everyone to [perform at] another level.' The Wallabies were also spurred on at Ellis Park by a brilliant performance from fullback Terry Casey, who kicked a conversion from touch, a penalty goal and a 40-metre drop goal, helped on its way by the thin air. Williams still remembers scoring his side's lone try that afternoon. 'It all happened so quickly, but it was a perfect try, because it started off with a lineout,' Williams said. 'Jim Boyce threw the ball into the lineout – and we had a terrific lineout forward, Rob Heming, who is no longer with us – he deflected the ball down to Peter Criddle, and Criddle went forward and turned his back on the opposition and passed the ball back to Dick Marks, who took off. 'I knew he [Marks] was going to pass the ball to me – he gave a perfect pass to me, and I just couldn't believe how good it was. 'I ran as fast as I've ever run down that sideline. There were four defenders coming across to get me, but I actually had enough speed to get away from them and get the ball down in the corner. 'It was a sensational time. I can't believe it happened so quickly. It's amazing, to be honest with you.' At the final whistle, Williams watched the South African team chair Wallabies captain John Thornett off the field on their shoulders in a gesture of sportsmanship. The celebrations lasted long into the night in the Australian team hotel. 'They didn't think they were going to be beaten, but they took it very well,' Williams remembered. 'They were a pretty polished side, and at the time they were one of the best sides going in rugby. 'But they were very, very good about it, and we had a good time in the sheds after the game and back at the hotel. One of our players got up on the desk in the hotel, and we all sang Waltzing Matilda, including the hotel staff.' Although the Wallabies were defeated in the final Test 22-6 in Port Elizabeth to leave the series locked at 2-2, the team was greeted in Sydney by 20,000 fans, who lined the streets for a ticker tape parade to mark their achievement. Gordon Bray covered his first Wallabies Test for the ABC in 1976 against France and has written extensively about the 1963 tour in his book The Immortals of Australian Rugby Union. Bray believes the victory in Johannesburg still stands up as one of the Wallabies' greatest, 62 years later. 'It's got to be right at the summit of Wallaby victories to win at altitude,' he said. 'The fact that we haven't won there for 62 years lets you know how hard it was. Loading 'I mean, the All Blacks really struggled to win there – they couldn't win a series in South Africa until the game went professional – so that's how hard it is. 'That Australian team [of 1963] didn't have the size of the South Africans up front, but they had brilliant players, and the way we played the game, the intelligence of the Australian team, really applies today. I think, that's the Australian way of playing ...
Economist
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Economist
Britain's draconian approach to pro-Gaza activism is likely to backfire
IN EARLY 1977 the Sex Pistols were mostly known, if at all, for having sworn on television. Then came the punk band's second single, 'God Save the Queen', with such lyrics as 'The fascist regime' and 'She ain't no human being'. MPs boiled with outrage; tabloids screamed treason. In forcing the BBC to ban all airplay, they only increased the song's allure. The record sold 150,000 copies a day, reaching number two during the week of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee, its place in the charts marked with a blank line.
Daily Maverick
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
'Where there's no future, how can there be sin?'- the rise of the age of Brutalism
Post-colonialism has given way to Brutalism; social contract to social assault; human rights to human wronging. The world is undergoing a change of age where the future, even the question of whether there is any future, has become extremely uncertain. In June 1977, Malcolm McLaren, the manager of punk rock band the Sex Pistols, stage-managed an enormous ambush. On the late Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee, the Sex Pistols' anthem God Save the Queen made it to number one. In those days, for young people, Top of the Pops was like Sunday church. We waited anxiously to see which group and song would reach No 1 each week. When it was God Save the Queen, the BBC promptly banned the song. In response, the Sex Pistols hired a barge and played it on the River Thames opposite the Houses of Parliament. The police were sent out to commandeer the boat and they were promptly arrested. Prompt was the operative word in the heady days when punk rockers fought the monarchy with music. Cauterise the infection quickly. Or so the establishment thought. What had this motley crew done wrong? In God Save the Queen, an anthem powered by an opening riff to beat all riffs, the Sex Pistols called the Queen's 'a fascist regime'. It wasn't. It was sclerotic and pampered by taxpayers. But the words rhymed, so why not? It was shocking. Believe me. But there was much more to punk rock than exaggeration. One of the lines in the song had much darker implications: 'Where there's no future, how can there be sin?' rasped lead singer Johnny Rotten before adding poetically: 'We're the flowers in your dustbin We're the poison in the human machine We're the future, your future' 'We' were the doomed, thrown-away working-class youth. At a time of rising unemployment, they were in rebellion by making a fashion of torn clothes, Mohican hair cuts and safety pins through their ears and noses. 'Foul-mouthed yobs' the establishment media called them. They made their point and changed the direction of popular music as well as of society. But it didn't end there. Almost 50 years later, the line 'where there's no future, how can there be sin?' reveals a surprising prescience. Looked at carefully, it's an existential statement that may offer a key to understanding the industrial cruelty being inflicted in Gaza and other places that ordinary people are unwilling bystanders to in the world at this moment. For 'sin', not coming from the dispossessed youth, but from the over-possessed elites, is now the name of the game. Post-colonialism has given way to Brutalism; social contract to social assault; human rights to human wronging. The sin pandemic There's a whole lot of sin in the world at the moment. Genocide is sin. Ecocide is sin. Femicide is sin. Infanticide is sin. Democide is sin. What's different is that the sinners have become oblivious to their sinning. They are certainly not sinned against. They don't sugar coat it; they think they are beyond sin. Why? I have been trying to comprehend such a quantum leap in loss of humanity, to work out how elected political leaders and oligarchs have become so brutalised. An epiphany that came to me while walking around Oxford recently. I think I have the answer. The world is undergoing a change of age where the future, even the question of whether there is any future, has become extremely uncertain. As climate chaos explodes, as the sixth mass extinction accelerates and now extends even to human beings, a largely uninhabitable earth may be a real prospect within several generations. The evidence is mounting: Nasa data reveals dramatic rise in intensity of weather events | Extreme weather | The Guardian; WMO confirms 2024 as warmest year on record at about 1.55°C above pre-industrial level; Climate change: World's oceans suffer from record-breaking year of heat – BBC News As the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh pointed out in a lecture he gave at Wits University in September 2024, the ultra-rich, while financing Trump and his climate denialism, are simultaneously preparing for the social breakdown that may be one consequence of the climate crisis. Ghosh writes: 'It is well known now that several billionaire tech entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Peter Thiel are preparing for an impending apocalypse by building enormously expensive and heavily fortified retreats on remote islands, or in sparsely populated stretches of the United States and Canada. Not to be left behind, a bevy of America's most popular stars, such as Taylor Swift and Tom Cruise, have also acquired cutting-edge apocalypse shelters. Nor are the ultra-rich the only Americans who are investing in doomsday retreats: so great is the demand that a new and rapidly growing industry has emerged to cater to it.' This is the time of survival of the richest. Democratic restraints and rules that took several centuries to establish are being broken with manic abandon. 'Death capitalism'; 'crack-up capitalism'. Call it what you like. The hypocrisies are worthy of Shakespeare. A political establishment that less than 30 years ago impeached a president for lying about having sex in the sacrosanct Oval Office, now enables a deranged president who blatantly abuses the office for private profit and has appropriated to himself the divine right to permit, stoke, arm or directly make wars that threatens millions of lives. For rulers who would be kings, who believe that the future is uncertain, indeed that for billions of human beings whose lives are extremely precarious, the very idea of a future is becoming untenable, moral rules fall away. Sin becomes permissible. Welcome to the new world disorder. Join the resistance. DM
Daily Mirror
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Prince Harry and Meghan's 'awkward exchange' at Trooping the Colour explained
The last time the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were included in the coveted royal balcony line up at the annual Trooping the Colour, fans spotted a seemingly tense moment between the two - but there's more than meets the eye The annual Trooping the Colour is set to kick off on Saturday, with members of the royal family and royal fans alike flocking to the Mall to celebrate King Charles ' birthday. After the Horse Guards Parade and during the RAF flypast, the royal family will appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony, which has famously been the setting for many iconic moments from the royals. From Prince William being scolded by the late Queen, to Prince Louis stealing the show with his cheeky antics, the balcony appearance is often the most anticipated part of the day. One such instance takes us back to the 2019 Trooping the Colour, which was the last time Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attended the annual event. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were joined on the balcony by a host of royals, including the late Queen Elizabeth, the then Prince Charles and Camilla, as well as William, Kate and their three children among others. When all the royals were waving at adoring fans along the Mall and enjoying the RAF flypast, eagle-eyed fans believed they spotted an awkward exchange between Harry and Meghan, making for a tense environment on the balcony. Footage shared of the moment on X showed Harry looking inside the room next to the balcony before saying a few words to someone off-camera. Meghan turns her head slightly and mouths something, then faces her husband. The couple share a few words and Meghan faces forward. She then turns around once more to face Harry - and it's at this point it looks like he instructs her to "turn around" - which she then does. Harry keeps up his stern facial expression while Meghan awkwardly tries to compose herself in front of the camera, which caused fans to speculate they may have had cross words. However, when the video is played with full sound, the context becomes clear and shows that there was more than meets the eye during the awkward moment. With the sound playing, the footage shows the moment occurred just a second or so before the National Anthem starts playing, meaning there's a good chance that Harry was actually just giving Meghan a heads up that the music was about to start playing so she wasn't caught out looking the wrong way. Instead of standing awkwardly after an assumed tense exchange, they are actually just listening to the opening part of God Save the Queen. While most of the senior working royals are expected to appear on the Palace balcony on Saturday for King Charles' birthday celebrations, it comes to no surprise that Harry and Meghan will not be attending. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex only attended two Trooping the Colour celebrations before they quit royal life in 2020, making appearances in 2018 and 2019. At the time of the 2018 procession, Meghan and Harry had recently tied the knot at their stunning Windsor Castle wedding ceremony. When they stepped out for the Trooping in 2019, their first child Archie had been born just the month before. The annual event of Trooping the Colour has marked the official birthday of the King or Queen for more than 260 years. The ceremony involves hundreds of horses and soldiers carrying out complex battlefield drill manoeuvres to military music. More than 1,400 soldiers, 200 horses and 400 musicians come together for the impressive display. During the parade, the royals will travel from Buckingham Palace down The Mall to Horse Guards Parade in a procession - either on horseback or in carriages. At Horse Guards, they then watch the military display before joining the procession back to Buckingham Palace once it is over. After the parade, the royals then gather on the Palace balcony for a march-past and the fly-past by the RAF, which includes the Red Arrows, and will conclude the day's celebrations.
