1947–48 Australia rugby union tour of Britain, Ireland, France and North America


Between July 1947 and March 1948 the Australia national rugby union team – the Wallabies – conducted a world tour encompassing Ceylon, Britain, Ireland, France and the United States on which they played five Tests and thirty-six minor tour matches. It was the first such tour in twenty years, since that of the 1927–28 Waratahs, as the 1939–40 Australia rugby union tour of Britain and Ireland tour had been thwarted by World War II. They were known as the Third Wallabies.
The 1947–48 side was notable in preserving their try-line uncrossed by any of the Home Nations in the first four Tests played. The nine-month journey was one of the last of that era of epic tours when transport was mostly by ship and when the tourists were whole-heartedly welcomed by rugby fans and townships, civic officials and royalty.
The Australians in those days were still showcasing the new running style of rugby that had not yet been fully embraced in the northern hemisphere. The legacy of Johnnie Wallace's leadership of 1927–28, of Cyril Towers and the credo of galloping rugby as played at his Randwick club in Sydney had some bearing on this. But Batchelor also suggests that the everyday competition for public attention between the two rugby codes caused the Australian game to need to match the speed and open play of the 13-a-side code. This need was not the same in London and Cardiff where rugby league as yet posed no threat to spectator numbers coming through rugby union turnstiles.

The squad's leadership

A squad of thirty players was selected under tour captain Bill McLean. McLean was an experienced Wallaby and leader. His father and brother had represented as both Wallabies and Kangaroos, with his other brother Jack also a Wallaby tourist. Bill McLean had been selected in the 1939 side who'd travelled to England under captain Vay Wilson and were promptly turned about upon the declaration of war without playing a match. He had seen action in World War II against the Japanese as a Captain in an AIF Commando unit in Borneo. He had captained Australia's first post-war Wallaby sides on four occasions against the All Blacks and his return to the British Isles was in some ways a completion of unfinished business.
Trevor Allan was only 20 when selected as vice-captain of the squad. He had impressed in his first state and national representative starts a year earlier but in a squad of veteran campaigners including Graeme Cooke and Phil Hardcastle his vice-captaincy was a surprise and an indication that he was being groomed for the future.
The tour was only six matches old when Bill McLean fulfilled his dream of playing at Twickenham in a minor clash against Combined Services. The match was near completion when McLean was hit by three tacklers from different angles. Howell, Tressider and Shehadie all write that the snap of bone breaking was audible to onlookers. McLean suffered a serious spiral fracture of the tibia and fibula and had played his last representative match. The tour captaincy passed at that moment to Allan, now just a few days past his 21st birthday. Allan was leading a squad comprising war veterans in Ken Kearney, Col Windon, Eddie Broad and Neville Emery; three qualified medical practitioners in Phil Hardcastle, Doug Keller and Clem Windsor; and a mixture of new and experienced Wallabies.
The tradition on earlier Australian tours had been that the manager took care of arrangements and the Asst-Manager fulfilled the coaching duties. Shehadie reports that Arnold Tancred and McLean coached and trained the 1947–48 side with vigour while Jeff Noseda took care of tour administration. Journalist Phil Tressider accompanied the touring party and wrote of Tancred "I remember Tancred as a grim, brooding man who not only managed the team but coached it and was sole selector. He would brook no interference and he kept the press at arm's length. He was fortified by his experiences as a player with the 1927–28 Waratahs and he had an aching ambition for victory", Shehadie wrote of Tancred. " was a very strict disciplinarian who was determined that we would win as many matches as possible. He would constantly remind us that we would only be remembered for the number of matches we won" and goes on to quote Jack Pollard: "The only criticism of Tancred was that relied perhaps too heavily on the team's proven stars and did not give newcomers many opportunities. He barred sportswriters travelling with the team from staying in the same hotel, was uncooperative with the press, and the team did not enjoy very sympathetic media coverage".'

Tour itinerary

The squad sailed southwards from Sydney Harbour in July 1947 aboard the passenger liner Orion. They departed Australia from Fremantle after crossing the Great Australian Bight, next docking in Colombo, Ceylon where they were welcomed and entertained by the expatriate community like the 1927–28 Waratahs before them. From there they sailed to Aden in Yemen, then Port Said, Egypt before arriving in England in the port town of Tilbury.
After seeing the sights of a London still scarred from wartime devastation, the party left by train for Penzance in Cornwall where their on-land training would pick up ahead of the first tour match against Combined Cornwall and Devon at Camborne won by the Wallabies. The minor matches would have an exacting toll with firstly McLean's injury in the sixth game and then the loss of champion Manly winger Charlie Eastes in the match against Newport to a broken arm which also spelled the end of his tour participation.
Rugged matches in Cardiff and Llanelly followed before the Wallabies returned to London where they visited the House of Commons and the House of Lords and met Clement Attlee at 10 Downing St. Later at St James's Palace they were received by the Duke of Gloucester, a former Governor-General of Australia and met his young son Prince William. A tour highlight was a royal reception at Buckingham Palace where the squad met the King and Queen and the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. When the squad travelled to Ireland for the second Test they met the President Éamon de Valera.
Back in Britain after the France Test, the Wallabies met the British Barbarians in their inaugural match against an international team – such fixtures would thereafter become a regular event against touring national southern-hemisphere sides. The Barbarians fielded six internationals from England, five from Wales, two from Scotland, one from Ireland. A Barbarian tradition is to select one uncapped player and on this occasion it was Blackheath F.C. winger Martin Turner. The Barbarians won 9–6 and at the after match function tour captain McLean was given honorary Barbarian membership.
After the Barbarians match the team sailed for New York aboard the Queen Mary. From there they travelled across the Rockies by train, playing a number of fixtures against sides comprising expatriates and American footballers. The final tour match was against a University of California team in Los Angeles. The homeward legs were taken by air – Australian National Airlines flew a Skymaster from Los Angeles to Hawaii, to Canton Island, to Fiji before arriving in Sydney on 28 March 1948. Two years later that very same plane – the Amana – would crash on a scheduled flight from Melbourne to Perth killing all 29 on board.

Test matches

AUSTRALIA: Brian Piper, Arthur Tonkin, Trevor Allan, Max Howell, John MacBride, Neville Emery, Cyril Burke, Eric Davis, Ken Kearney, Eric Tweedale, Joe Kraefft, Graeme Cooke, Douglas Keller, Arthur Buchan, Colin Windon
SCOTLAND: Ian Lumsden, Thomas Jackson, John Innes, Thomas Wright, Charles McDonald, Derek Hepburn, Dallas Allardice, Robert Bruce, Dod Lyall, Ian Henderson, Leslie Currie, Hamish Dawson, Doug Elliot, Alexander Watt, Jimmy Lees
AUSTRALIA: Brian Piper, Arthur Tonkin, Max Howell, Trevor Allan, John MacBride, Neville Emery, Cyril Burke, Bob McMaster, Ken Kearney, Eric Tweedale, Joe Kraefft, Graeme Cooke, Douglas Keller, Arthur Buchan, Colin Windon
IRELAND: Dudley Higgins, William McKee, Kevin Quinn, Paddy Reid, Kevin O'Flanagan, Jack Kyle, Ernest Strathdee, Jimmy Corcoran, Karl Mullen, Albert McConnell, Richard Wilkinson, Jimmy Nelson, Bill McKay, Ernie Keeffe, Desmond McCourt
AUSTRALIA: Brian Piper, Arthur Tonkin, Trevor Allan, Max Howell, John MacBride, Neville Emery, Cyril Burke, Bob McMaster, Ken Kearney, Eric Davis, Joe Kraefft, Graeme Cooke, Douglas Keller, Arthur Buchan, Colin Windon
WALES: Billy Cleaver, Ken Jones, Bleddyn Williams, Jack Matthews, Leslie Williams, Glyn Davies, Handel Greville, Emlyn Davies, Mal James, Cliff Davies, John Gwilliam, Bill Tamplin, Ossie Williams, Les Manfield, Gwyn Evans
Australia were beaten squarely in a dull, forwards based game with neither side penetrating to score a try.
The Wallabies enjoyed a feast of possession in the first half with their locks Cooke and Kraefft dominating the line-outs and their forwards ahead in the scrums three to one. The match was played at a furious pace and at the twenty-minute mark suddenly for the first time in four Tests the Australian goal line was threatened when the English centre Bennett put Swarbrick into open space.
Swarbrick licked up the pass like a sprinter head down for the finish. Sheer pace carried him on. Tonkin could not get to him. He swerved out, his flying feet not brushing the chalk from the touch line. Piper's dash to the corner was too late. Swarbrick pounced forward – he was clear ! The 70,000 crowd were on their toes. Wild arms waved to high heaven. The Twickenham Valley, pinched between the canyon grandstands, reverberated with thundering clanging to a crescendo. He was not only clear – he was through ! He was indeed over the line, safely, marvellously home. He had but to fall on his face and England would be a try up. A dead man must have scored us three points. And then, as Swarbrick hurled himself down, a pin-pointed rocket caught him, swept him through mid-air, ball and all, into the no-man's land of touch in goal. It was Trevor Allan, the forlorn hope, saving his side after all was lost.
The sides were evenly matched thereafter with both sets of backs depriving the other of a scoring opportunity. Then right before half-time a kick by Newman failed to find touch and landed in the Australian pack for Ken Kearney to bring the ball forward. It went through many hands before Colin Windon scored in the corner to give the Wallabies a 3–0 lead at the break.
With the game three-quarters over England's full-back Syd Newman hit the post with a penalty attempt that would have kept them in the match. Then with ten minutes to go, the game opened up in Australia's favour. Alan Walker chip-kicked ahead, regathered in spectacular fashion and scored. Then Col Windon's punishing defence on English pivot Tommy Kemp saw Kemp spill the ball and Windon set off like "the Breeze" he was affectionately known as, and outpaced all to the try-line.
AUSTRALIA: Brian Piper, Arthur Tonkin, Trevor Allan, Alan Walker, John MacBride, Neville Emery, Cyril Burke, Nicholas Shehadie, Ken Kearney, Eric Tweedale, Joe Kraefft, Graeme Cooke, Douglas Keller, Arthur Buchan, Colin Windon
ENGLAND: Syd Newman, Dickie Guest, Billy Bennett, Edward Scott, David Swarbrick, Tommy Kemp, Richard Madge, Eric Evans, John Keeling, Harry Walker, Joe Mycock, Samuel Victor Perry, Micky Steele-Bodger, Douglas Vaughan, Jika Travers
AUSTRALIA: Brian Piper, Arthur Tonkin, Trevor Allan, Alan Walker, John MacBride, Neville Emery, Cyril Burke, Nicholas Shehadie, Ken Kearney, Eric Tweedale, Joe Kraefft, Graeme Cooke, Douglas Keller, Arthur Buchan, Colin Windon
FRANCE': Andre Alvarez, Michel Pomathios, Pierre Dizabo, Maurice Terreau, Roger Lacaussade, Leon Bordenave, Gerard Dufau, Lucien Caron, Lucien Martin, Eugene Buzy, Alban Moga, Robert Soro, Jean Prat, Guy Basquet, Jean Matheu-Cambas

Touring party

Matches of the tour

The "Exhibition Matches" are not classed as important as the "Tour matches", they are listed on the tour although the starting line-ups are not counted in the players stats.
N°Opposing TeamFADateVenueStatus
1 Devon and Cornwall17713 September 1947Recreation Ground, CamborneTour match
2 Midland Counties221417 September 1947Villa Park, BirminghamTour match
3 Gloucestershire & Somerset30820 September 1947Kingsholm Stadium, GloucesterTour match
4 Abertillery and Cross Keys6324 September 1947AbertilleryTour match
5 Cardiff31127 September 1947Cardiff Arms ParkTour match
6 Combined Services1981 October 1947Twickenham, LondonTour match
7 Northumberland and Durham4905 October 1947Gosforth Greyhound Stadium, GosforthTour match
8 North of Scotland1408 October 1947Linksfield Stadium, AberdeenTour match
9 South of Scotland15611 October 1947The Greenyards, MelroseTour match
10 Glasgow & Edinburgh23915 October 1947GlasgowTour match
11 Cumberland and Yorkshire25018 October 1947WorkingtonTour match
12 Newport8423 October 1947Rodney Parade, NewportTour match
13 Aberavon and Neath19925 October 1947The Gnoll, NeathTour match
14 Llanelli6428 October 1947Stradey Park, LlanelliTour match
15 London Counties2081 November 1947Twickenham, LondonTour match
16 Cambridge University1296 November 1947Grange Road, CambridgeTour match
17 Hampshire and Sussex1458 November 1947The Dell, SouthamptonTour match
18 Oxford University RFC5313 November 1947Oxford University, OxfordTour match
19 Leicestershire & East Midlands171115 November 1947Welford Road, LeicesterTour match
20 Scotland16722 November 1947Murrayfield, EdinburghTest match
21 Lancashire & Cheshire8926 November 1947Belle Vue Stadium, ManchesterTour match
22 Ulster10829 November 1947Ravenhill Stadium, BelfastTour match
231636 December 1947Lansdowne Road, DublinTest match
24 Munster659 December 1947Mardyke, CorkTour match
25 Swansea RFC11813 December 1947St Helen's Ground SwanseaTour match
26 Wales0620 December 1947Cardiff Arms, CardiffTest match
27 Pontypool, Talywain & Blaenavon9723 December 1947Pontypool Park, PontypoolTour match
28 London Counties81426 December 1947Twickenham, LondonTour match
29 England1103 January 1948Twickenham, LondonTest match
30 France61311 January 1948Stade Colombes, ParisTest match
31 South West France8715 January 1948BordeauxTour match
32 Toulon16521 January 1948ToulonTour match
33 Île-de-France301224 January 1948ParisTour match
34Barbarians6931 January 1948Cardiff Arms Park, CardiffTour match
35 Vancouver All Stars36328 February 1948VancouverExhibition Match
36 University of British Columbia2063 March 1948VancouverExhibition Match
37 Victoria4886 March 1948VancouverExhibition Match
38 University of California12617 March 1948Los AngelesExhibition Match
39 Stanford University591021 March 1948Palo Alto, San FranciscoExhibition Match

Footnotes