'I was f***ing raging' at most violent act seen in rugby game

The British and Irish Lions head to Australia in 2025 for the latest installment in what is one of the most popular traditions in the game.

The best talents from Wales, England, Scotland and Ireland will head Down Under - almost certainly under the stewardship of Ireland head coach Andy Farrell - to take on the Wallabies in their own backyard.

The last time the tourists went to Australia was in 2013 when they came away with a 2-1 Test series win, with George North announcing himself on the world stage with a sensational try in Brisbane and his now-infamous fireman's lift-style tackle on Israel Folau.

However it was an incident on the 2001 tour to the southern hemisphere that perhaps lives longer - and more gruesomely - in the memory.

Let's rewind to the events of Sydney Football Stadium on June 23, 2001.

The match will forever be remembered for the appalling assault by Duncan McRae on Ronan O’Gara, one that saw the Waratahs’ man ram 11 punches into the Lions fly-half’s face.

It was cage-fighting without the cage but with only one bloke doing the fighting — O’Gara simply took the beating.

When he turned up at a press conference the following evening, his left eye black and with stitches inserted in a fierce-looking cut, he looked as if he had gone 12 rounds with Michael Gerard Tyson circa 1988.

Yet for what Lions team manager Donal Lenihan was to describe as “the most vicious assault that we have seen in a game of rugby since it went professional", McRae didn’t exactly have the book thrown at him.

He was banned for seven weeks. With the Australian season ending, it was effectively a zero-game ban. For a game trying to sell itself to a wider audience, it wasn’t exactly a glorious episode.

What happened?

The first thing to say is that nothing can justify an attack of the sort McRae launched on O’Gara.

The Irishman may not have endeared himself to every single person on this planet over the years. He can be ruthlessly sharp and quick-witted and sometimes brings out the demons in opponents: witness Gethin Jenkins hurling a ball at him after scoring the opening try in Wales’ Grand Slam win over Ireland in 2005. The first impulse wasn’t to celebrate but to catch up with O’Gara. It remains one of the abiding images of that campaign.

But, still...

The Waratahs-Lions game of 22 years ago had been a rough-house affair from the start, with home lock Tom Bowman receiving a yellow card while some supporters were settling in their seats. Bowman hit Danny Grewcock with an elbow in the face amid no obvious attempt to go for the ball.

Grewcock, who never came within a space flight of sainthood during his career, didn’t meekly accept what was being dished out a week before the opening Test. He received a yellow card during the game and so did Phil Vickery.

Two other Aussies did, too. You know a match is lively when Martin Johnson says at the end of it: “It got a bit crazy out there.”

But even amid the bumps, sly digs and stray elbows, McRae’s work stood apart. O’Gara had cleared him out at a ruck (“I thought I did that quite effectively,” he said the next evening).

Perhaps too effectively for McRae’s tastes. The Australian attacked the Lions No. 10 on the ground, his right-arm pumping piston-like into the Irishman’s face.

In the stadium the incident seemed to go on forever. Referee Scott Young sent off McRae. Had the episode unfolded on the street, police would have carted him off.

What they said then

The need was for wholesale condemnation and an unequivocal apology. It didn't happen.

Waratahs coach Bob Dwyer said: "O’Gara used an elbow and lashed out with his boot on the ground. Duncan took offence and decided to square it up.”

The squaring up didn’t exactly look proportionate to most in the ground. Lions team boss Lenihan later said: “I was disappointed with the way the Waratahs management tried to defend the incident, not least because they were defending the indefensible.

“What annoyed me most was that McRae said nothing to Ronan. There was no attempt to apologise, and I thought that very poor under the circumstances. They tried to say that McRae acted in retaliation, when they would have been far better off simply putting up their hands."

Of McRae and his evident endorsement at the time of the old Elton John line that sorry seems to be the hardest word, O’Gara said: “It’s his decision whether he apologises or not.”

Fast-forward

O’Gara revisited the episode in his autobiography, time having done little to quench his fury. “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 2013, the Daily Mail’s Chris Foy caught up with McRae for an interview. Reflecting on that infamous episode, the ex-full-back said: “‘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.”

There were rumours of death threats from Ireland and confrontations in the street when he was recognised. Maybe Oliver Cromwell was more unpopular in the Emerald Isle, maybe not. There had been the potential for a face-to-face apology when Gloucester played Munster in the Heineken Cup in 2003.

The day wasn’t seized. “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.”

In fact, he had previously said sorry for what happened, but not directly to O’Gara.

A final word

Maybe it’s best to revisit Austin Healy’s thoughts on the incident all those years ago. "Duncan took exception to the fact that someone did something perfectly legal to him and decided to punch him 11 times in the face," said Healey. “Cowardly would be the most appropriate way to sum it up."

They say McRae is a nice enough guy. But that night in Sydney he lost control. The following season's Rugby Annual for Wales said he had given "an impressive impersonation of an enraged street-fighter".

Bob Dwyer's view on the night? “I would say excessive force would be the police interpretation.” An understatement if ever there was one.