Considered amongst the greatest players to ever represent Australia, David Campese has enjoyed a decorated life in rugby. The legendary wing never failed to bring the Wallabies fans to their feat, and enjoyed a 14-year career in the fabled gold jersey. Campese took Australia to the top of World Rugby’s pedestal back in 1991, as he led the Wallabies to win their first of two Rugby World Cups.
The late 80s and early 90s have since been known as the ‘Golden Era’ of Australian rugby, with Campese’s face firmly etched into stone on the Wallabies’ Mount Rushmore. The current Australian national side is a far cry from the heroics of yester-year, as less than one month ago, the Wallabies suffered their worst ever Rugby World Cup finish. Australia were eliminated from the 2023 Rugby World Cup pool stages, for the very first time in their history.
Defeats to Wales and Fiji saw Australia crash out of Pool C, with the side’s entire campaign overshadowed by the rumours surrounding Eddie Jones’ pending departure. Campese cast his opinion over the struggles of today’s Wallabies, and explained why rugby union ‘down under’ now has far less of a following, than in Campese’s prime. Speaking in partnership with BettingSites.co.uk, Campese said;
“Look, I lived in South Africa for 10 years, came back to Australia in 2018, and I went around the country coaching kids. And the biggest problem was that nobody knows who the Wallabies are, which is very scary. Because we’ve (Australia) got rugby league, and we’ve got other sports that are on free to air TV.
“If I did ask the kids who their favourite rugby player was, it was either a kiwi or a rugby league player.
You know what I mean? We haven’t got the history. Back in the amateur days when we started to win in the 90s, every kid knew who the Wallabies were. We had TV commercials, ‘Wanna be a Wallaby’. We had all that, everyone knew because we actually entertained. Sport these days is about entertaining.”
As Campese mentioned, Rugby Union is not the most-viewed sport by any means in Australia. The Wallabies play third-string to Rugby League’s NRL and Aussie Rules’ AFL competitions for ‘footie’ fans. Cricket is also amongst the nation’s most followed sports, and Campese believes that rugby union can learn a few things from an entertainment stand-point.
“Australia played Afghanistan in cricket, there’s this guy called Glenn Maxwell. Well, he came on and scored 200! Australian were like seven or eight (wickets) for 90 (runs), and he got 200. I mean, that for me, that’s what we need. We need excitement, we need something to get people wanting to play, and wanting to watch.
“The thing is at the moment with rugby, if you look at the Rugby World Cup, this TMO destroys the game. They go to TMO about this, about that, and I just find it very strange that we’ve got a rugby game that’s out there, I was at the final, and there was so much time wasted. ‘Oh, we’ve got to have a look at this, and have a look at that’. If we want to entertain the people, we’ve got to look at our game and say ‘we’ve got to clean it up a bit, and make it quicker.’ We don’t want a three minute scrum.
“A question, the World Cup ’91, you know how long the scrum took to form, and get the ball out in 1991? Eleven seconds. They have them (today) for three minutes. I don’t understand, because the forwards know how to scrum, the referee has got no idea. Get him away, get the ball in, and get it out. If you do that, it’s going to make a quicker game. People don’t want to watch a scrum collapse, three minutes, three and a half minutes, that’s part of the game that we don’t want.”
There are circulating reports from Australia, that the nation is getting set for a complete overhaul of their operations. In a style similar to the All Blacks or Ireland, the governing body Rugby Australia, could soon take precedence over the top stars’ contacts, in a ‘centralised system’ for the five Super Rugby clubs. Campese gave his thoughts on how the professional era feels a world away from the amateur days, with the financial incentive reflected in the attitudes of the modern rugby landscape.
“I think one of the biggest concerns are, is that a lot of the players from Super Rugby, didn’t want to go back and play club rugby. Club rugby is what rugby is. That’s the general population, I remember playing, look i’m not too young now, but we played a test match up in Ballymore Stadium (Brisbane) one year, next day I flew home and played club rugby on the Sunday.
“Because that’s what rugby was, it’s about your club. And unfortunately, professionalism changed everything. It’s about money. You know, a lot of these guys, once they make the Wallabies they think ‘I owe nobody anything’. But the thing is, you do actually owe the people, the young guys, the game, because if it wasn’t for the club that you played with, you would never have played for Australia.
“You know, I remember a couple of years ago, because I’ve coached in South Africa for 10 years with the Natal Sharks, Jannie and Bismarck du Plessis were my good mates. And a couple of years ago, the (Emirates) Lions played the New South Wales (Waratahs) guys in Sydney. I was looking out there, and I saw Jannie, and I called out to him, and he came over and said ‘hello’. Took a photo with my son, Jason.
“Anyway, so before the game a couple of days I rang New South Wales and I said ‘listen, I’ve got all these guys from a school my son went to, is it possible to get a couple of these players to come and say hello?’ ‘Oh, no, we can’t do that.’ But Jannie came over and said hello. You know what I mean? So unless the players, the young kids touch the players, speak to them, they’ve got no contact.
“I remember when we played back in the 80s and 90s, I took photos with kids at a school with the Bledisloe Cup. You can’t even touch the Bledisloe (today), there’s 25 security guards. Back then I’d have a photo with a kid, with the whole school and the Bledisloe! Because we took the initiative to get the kids involved, that’s what I think is really missing.”
Australia’s 2023 Rugby World Cup campaign was little short of a train-wreck. The Wallabies entered the competition off the back of a winless Rugby Championship campaign, and the press conference events often witnessed heated interactions with Eddie Jones. The 63-year-old had agreed a five year deal to take charge of the Wallabies ahead of the tournament, and also reportedly oversee the Wallaroos Women’s side. However, Jones left his post after just nine months, with Australia ‘A’ coach Jason Gilmore a front-runner for the vacancy.
A key instigator in Jones departure was a lack of support from the fans and Rugby Australia. Jones was widely reported to have been interviewed for a job with the Japan national side, just two weeks before Australia began their Rugby World Cup campaign. These speculations continue after his short-lived tenure, and Campese had his say on the saga that came to the detriment of the Wallabies’ World Cup run.
“Well, the thing is Eddie’s had a relationship with Japan for over 20 years anyway. I mean, Suntory (Sungoliath – Japan Rugby League One club), he’s always done that. So I mean, I think there’s been a lot made out of something that’s probably not really involved with, in how the Wallabies play. You know, I remember one press conference, (a reporter) said to the captain, ‘what’s with Eddie’s Japan links?’, ‘well we had no idea.’
“The players are there to play, just let them play. You know, they tried to make this big thing about it, and unfortunately, decisions were made, which were probably not the best at the time. And again, that’s why officials off the field shouldn’t determine what happens on the field.
Legacy code“I think there was a great demonstration about people making decisions, what they thought was going to happen, but didn’t really happen. And unfortunately mate, we’re going to go through life and it’s going to happen again, sometime. We’ve got the British Lions ’25, the World Cup ’27 and Olympic Games in ’32. So we’ve got a lot of things happening, we just got to be smart about what do we need to do.
“We need to get the kids to understand who the Wallabies are. We need to get some of the older guys involved. Go around coaching kids, coaching the coaches and saying, ‘these are the skills we need, if we want to win, this is what we’re going to do’. And unfortunately, for many years now, the older guys have not been invited. Because we’re old, we’re different. We talk about different things, coaches these days are educators, their not actually coaches.”
Older fans of the Wallabies certainly know who Campese is. The ‘Great Entertainer’ scored a record six tries on Australia’s road to Rugby World Cup glory, and was named as the Player of the Tournament for his stunning efforts along the wing. However, when asked if winning the Web Ellis Cup back in ’91 was the pinnacle of his career, the 61-year-old reminisced on a star-studded tenure that took him on a globe-trotting journey.
“So difficult because I mean, I’ve played from 1982 to 1996. The Grand Slam in ’84 was very prominent as well, we beat New Zealand, we were the only team since 1986 to win the Bledisloe Cup at Eden Park and we haven’t won since. So, I obviously lived in Italy for 10 years, playing rugby, travelled the world. I played with the French Barbarians, British Barbarians, South African Barbarians, Australian Barbarians, South American Barbarians! I played Sevens in Hong Kong for 12 years. So, mate, rugby is an amazing sport and my background, I was very, very honoured to get the opportunity to travel the world and have a great time.”
An undoubted all-time great, Campese is widely regarded as the top talent of late amateur era. 101 test caps for the Wallabies saw Campese cross over for 64 test tries, which stood as a record-setting tally when he hung up his boots. ‘Campo’ to his colleagues and revered in every language by the opposition, the magical wing recalled who his toughest opponents were, throughout his international career.
“Well, I think was 1983. We went to France. And the first test I think was in Bordeaux. And I was marking a guy called Serge Blanco on the wing. And there was this guy at fullback called Jean-Baptiste Lafond, and we go ‘who the hell is this guy?’
“Anyway, he was absolutely destroying us. Because in those days when you go on tour, you play the ‘French Selection’. You don’t actually play a provincial side like you do now. And so we haven’t seen Jean-Baptiste before, so the forwards got together and said ‘well, we’ve got to get rid of this guy’, so they busted his shoulder and got rid of him. So Serge (Blanco) went back to fullback.
“So, it was amazing to see the amount of talent that these guys had in France back in those days. And they played an unbelievable style of rugby. You know, (Didier) Camberabero, I think there was one game he played in England at Twickenham, and picked the ball up from under his posts and scored the other end. That was French rugby. It all changed when it went professional. And that was the scary part of the game.”
Campese’s longevity as a Wallaby, took him to over a century of test caps across an ever-changing era. Campese was named in the number 11 jersey in the 1980’s Team of the Decade, by Rothman’s Rugby Union Yearbook. He recalled a some of his top former teammates, having shared the pitch with true icons of Australia’s past.
“Okay, it’s very difficult. I played from ’82 to ’96, so I come across a couple of generations. When you’ve got guys like Mark Ella, Nick Farr-Jones, you’ve got, you know, Andrew Slack who was a great captain. Then you go to Chris Lathams, you’ve got Matt Burke, you’ve got so many good players, it’s very difficult to sort of pick one or two.
‘I think Nick Farr-Jones was my best captain because we had a great relationship. And I think, I scored 64 tries, I think he had a hand in 49 of them, because we have this great combination. And that’s what happens when you get to that level when combinations are vital under pressure.
“And I think that’s what’s changed now, is that we’ve got five (Super Rugby) teams in Australia, where if you had two or three teams, the more you play together, the more you understand (each other). I think back in those days, it was a lot better and we were probably better as amateurs. And you know, winning two World Cups, I think that demonstrated we were miles ahead of the rest.”
One match that is heralded amongst the great games of Campese’s era, was the 24-30 defeat to France, in the 1987 Rugby World Cup semi-final. Despite playing the match with a severely injured ankle, Campese added a try to the score-board. This match came in the inaugural Rugby World Cup, with the Wallabies experiencing training camps for the first time outside of their nine-to-five amateur era jobs. Campese believes that the Wallabies could well have won the match, if they were allowed to go about their regular day jobs, and go home to their families.
“It was at Concord oval in Sydney. It only held 17,000, it was actually just a rugby oval in the suburbs. 17,000 people, which was not much back in those days. But obviously we had bigger stadiums, but because they had to have a clean slate, no advertising in any of the ovals. So we couldn’t use the 30, 40,000 people stadiums.
“It was (a great game) but I was actually injured. After the World Cup, I had a problem with my ankle. And then I realised that the bone had cracked in half. So I was running around with painkillers for six weeks. Look, it was great. But it’s very difficult, it was the first time we actually played at home during the World Cup. So we have six weeks in hotels and normally you’d be working, you’d have the family, like normal, but we didn’t do that.
“So it was very unusual for us. And it didn’t (work), it really worked against us. And I think that if we had that time again, obviously going to work and being normal, we probably would have performed better. But that French game was unbelievable. If you look at the French team; (Philippe) Sella, you had Blanco, you had all the great players, (Laurent) Rodriguez and all that. That’s what rugby is about. You’ve got to turn up and play, and if you don’t play well, you lose.”
Campese has certainly been amongst rugby royalty throughout his career, yet re-called an unforgettable interaction he had with a late member of the British monarchy. Campese and his Wallabies were stunned when they first met Lady Diana, when the Princess of Wales welcomed the side ahead of their 1991 Rugby World Cup Pool Stage match in Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.
“We played Wales on the Saturday, and before the game, Lady Diana was introduced to the players on the field. So we had 30 rugby players, I had never seen 30 rugby players just looking at this set of legs walking around, I was actually going to ask her out for a date! It was a bit difficult then, having to go and play a game of rugby. So, yeah. that was a good moment.”
“I mean, the World Cup in ’91, after ’87 hosting the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Obviously getting the opportunity to play a World Cup overseas and playing in Wales, Ireland, England, you know, the traditional rugby (nations), it was absolutely amazing. And the opportunity we got to meet the fans, I think we’re very fortunate to play a good style of rugby as well. So I think that really helps, when you enjoy your rugby on the field you enjoy it off the field.”