When the Lions return to the scene of the crime on Saturday, Duncan McRae will be a spectator, but 12 years ago he was the offender-in-chief, in a match of savage violence.
Eleven punches to the head of a grounded Ronan O’Gara earned the New South Wales Waratahs full back a red card, a seven-week ban and a lifetime of infamy. In a fiery encounter full of ugly clashes, McRae’s sustained assault was the low point on an occasion which the-then Lions coach, Graham Henry, called ‘a bad day for rugby’.
Whatever Warren Gatland’s 2013 team have to face at the subsequently re-named Sydney Football Stadium, it surely won’t contain the brutal excess of the corresponding fixture in 2001.
Yet, McRae’s reflections on what happened the last time these sides met provide a cautionary tale of what could await the Lions – on some level; legitimate or otherwise – prior to facing Australia.
‘With the first Test seven days away and the quality the Lions had, it was a massive game against their No 1 side,’ he told Sportsmail.
‘We wanted to make a statement in the build-up to the Test series. We were fired-up for a big game, in front of a big crowd on a big night for us, but the whole thing spilled over and caught up with a few of us.
‘We wanted to put a stamp down and bash them up a bit before the Tests, but history doesn’t look on us kindly, because they responded with a fantastic performance in Brisbane a week later. Maybe in hindsight we should have gone in with a softer mentality! We just added fuel to the fire.’
Attempting to explain how he wound up using O’Gara’s head as a punch-bag, to leave the Ireland fly half’s left eye swollen closed, he added: ‘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.’
The second-half incident caused an eruption of rage within the Lions ranks, with Henry condemning what he saw as blatant intimidation from the home team and manager Donal Lenihan furiously telling the players that they had been ‘set up’. McRae sensed the understandable hostility, but insisted that there was no pre-conceived plan to injure the opposition.
‘I had to walk past their bench on the way to the tunnel, which was quite a shaky experience,’ he said.
‘I thought it might kick off. They thought I had tried to get under their skin and cause damage before the Test seven days later, but as my coach at the time (Bob Dwyer) said at the judicial hearing, if we had wanted to cause them damage, why would the smallest bloke in the team be asked to do it? We just wanted to be aggressive.’
In the aftermath of the match, McRae became a hate figure, with rumours of death threats from Ireland and public confrontations in the street when he was recognised and targeted. He later joined Gloucester and had to withstand a vitriolic reception when the fixture list took him to Limerick to take on O’ Gara’s Munster.
The English club ordered a junior squad player to swap hotel rooms with him as a security precaution and when the game ended, McRae is said to have run straight off the pitch, up the tunnel and on to the team bus – fearful of attack.
There has been no truce with O’Gara since. ‘I haven’t spoken to him personally,’ said McRae. ‘When that game against Munster finished I just got back on the bus and didn’t get an opportunity to speak to him. 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.
‘A lot of people were pretty upset with me and I’m glad there wasn’t social media back then! Some of the stuff that went on freaked my family out but I can understand it – people are supportive and protective of their players.’
When the current Waratahs team confront the Lions on Saturday, McRae predicts a comfortable victory for the tourists, but home coach Michael Cheika is determined that his players will fight the good fight in an entirely legal way.
Asked if the game could boil over, as the 2001 one did, he said: ‘I think those days are gone, but physicality can occur in a lot of ways; rucks, scrums, contacts have got to be big from our lads.
We have to be big, not hold anything back and see if we can put some type of dent in the tank, because it’s rolling pretty quickly at the moment. Anything in red that moves, we’ll have a crack at.
‘You will never soften the Lions up because they’re tough – they’ve won Grand Slams and been in World Cup quarter-finals and semi-finals recently so they’re mentally tough and physically tough. But if we can just put a little bit of doubt in their minds, we can do our bit to help Australia’s cause.’
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