Lions v Waratahs match was rocked by act of violence never seen before
The British and Irish Lions faced the New South Wales Waratahs in Sydney - but the match will forever be remembered for an appalling assault
Duncan McRae repeatedly punches stricken Ronan O'Gara
Rugby, by its very nature, is a game where legal physical violence is par for the course. Every now and then, though, the line is crossed beyond the acceptable physicality that is integral to the game.
In June, 2001, when the Lions visited Australia, the tour was rocked by an assault so abhorent, few had seen its like before on a rugby pitch. It came during a match against New South Wales Waratahs, who the Lions play this Saturday, with Aussie play Duncan McRae disgracing himself and going down in history for the wrong reasons.
The match will forever be infamous for the shocking assault by McRae on Ronan O'Gara, which saw the Waratahs' player land 11 punches on the Lions fly-half's face.
It resembled cage-fighting without the cage, but with only one man doing the fighting - O'Gara simply endured the beating.
Appearing at a press conference the next evening, his left eye blackened and stitches inserted into a severe cut, he looked as if he had gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson circa 1988.
Yet for what Lions team manager Donal Lenihan described as "the most vicious assault that we have seen in a game of rugby since it went professional", McRae didn't exactly face severe punishment.
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He was banned for seven weeks. With the Australian season ending, it effectively amounted to a zero-game ban.
First and foremost, it's crucial to acknowledge that nothing justifies an attack of the nature McRae launched on O'Gara.
While O'Gara may not have won over everyone with his personality over the years, being sharp-tongued and quick-witted, sometimes provoking opponents to react irrationally, that's still no excuse.
The 2001 Waratahs-Lions match had been a heated, physical affair from the start, with Tom Bowman, the home lock, receiving a yellow card in the early stages for elbowing Danny Grewcock in the face. Grewcock, never known for being a saint, didn't take kindly to the treatment dished out a week before the first Test.
He, along with Phil Vickery, received a yellow card during the game, and two Australian players were also booked.
You know a match has reached a boiling point when Martin Johnson remarks afterwards, "It got a bit crazy out there."
Even amid the chaos, bumps, and stray elbows, McRae's actions stood out as particularly egregious.
O'Gara had successfully cleared McRae out at a ruck ("I thought I did that quite effectively," he commented the following evening). Perhaps too hard-hitting for McRae's liking.
The Australian lashed out at the Lions number 10 on the pitch, delivering blows right into the Irishman's face with relentless ferocity that left viewers stunned..
Ronan O'Gara leaves the field after the awful assault on him
Inside the stadium, it felt like an eternity as the scene played out before the spectators.
Referee Scott Young gave McRae his marching orders. Outside of the sporting venue, such actions would likely have resulted in police intervention.
What happened afterwards
There was a call for thorough denunciation and a clear-cut apology, but it failed to materialise.
Waratahs head coach Bob Dwyer commented: "O'Gara used an elbow and lashed out with his boot on the ground.
"Duncan took offence and decided to square it up."
It was a skewed assessment of events, to say the least.
Lions team manager Lenihan expressed later: "I was disappointed with the way the Waratahs management tried to defend the incident, not least because they were defending the indefensible.
"What irked me the most was that McRae stayed silent towards Ronan. No effort to apologise was there, which I found utterly subpar in those circumstances. They attempted to justify McRae's retaliatory stance, when admission of guilt would have been the more respectable course of action."
O'Gara remarked: "It's his decision whether he apologises or not."
Ronan O'Gara tends to his injured face
(Image: Dave Rogers/ALLSPORT )
O'Gara looked back on the harrowing episode in his memoirs, his anger undiminished by time.
"We were attacking inside their 22, I passed to Woody (Keith Wood) and he took it up close to their 5-metre line. Two of their guys brought Woody down. One of them was Duncan McRae.
"As the ruck was forming I followed up and shoved him. Next thing I knew I was on the ground and McRae was pucking the head off me.
"After the first dig I thought it was going to stop any second but they kept coming. Nine. Ten. Eleven. A frenzy of digs. One after another after another. I just lay there and took it. It was the weirdest feeling. Lying there I felt totally lost. Like I was in a daze.
"Even though he was on top of me, I wasn't pinned down. I tried to protect my face with my right arm and after a couple of seconds I grabbed the back of his jersey with my left. Useless. Pointless. Why? Why didn't I try to push him off? Hit him. Something. Why did I just take it?".
"Two lacerations under my left eye needed eight stitches but the pain of that was nothing compared to the humiliation. Why didn't I try to defend myself? In the dressing room I was f*****g raging. Raging with myself. Raging with McRae. When the game was over I wanted to go into their dressing room and have a cut off him."
McRae's take....
In a 2013 interview with the Daily Mail, former rugby full-back McRae looked back on the notorious clash: "'Me and Ronan crossed paths a few times in the build-up to that moment. We got involved, but I ended up taking it to the wrong level. He's a fiery bloke and I'm a fiery bloke, so no-one's going to back down. None of the Lions backed down that night.
"He and I know what happened in there. He did something, I saw red, he was below me and the rest is history. That's what I'm known for now and I have to live with that. In hindsight, I wish it hadn't got to that point but I can't change it now – what's done is done."
Duncan McRae of the Waratahs smiles at referee Scott Young after he was sent off
Subsequent rumours hinted at death threats from Ireland and altercations when he was spotted on the streets.
An opportunity for a direct apology arose during a Heineken Cup match between Gloucester and Munster in 2003 but it went unexploited.
McRae commented: "I haven't spoken to him personally," and admitted post-match, "When that game against Munster finished I just got back on the bus and didn't get an opportunity to speak to him."
Regarding any lingering resentment, McRae said: "You would have to ask him if there is a grudge, but I live in Australia and he lives in Ireland, and that's the end of it."
Although he had apologised for the incident previously, it was never directly to O'Gara.
The piece concluded, possibly evoking the sentiments expressed by Austin Healy so many years prior.
"Duncan took exception to the fact that someone did something perfectly legal to him and decided to punch him 11 times in the face," Healey commented.
"Cowardly would be the most appropriate way to sum it up."
They suggest McRae is a decent bloke.
But that night in Sydney, he lost his cool.
The subsequent season's Rugby Annual for Wales described his behaviour as "an impressive impersonation of an enraged street-fighter".
Bob Dwyer's perspective on the incident?
"I would say excessive force would be the police interpretation."
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An understatement if ever there was one.
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