Part 1 - Queensland divided.
In the middle of 1995, following the first tumultuous months of rugby league’s internecine Super League War, with the code riven between Rupert Murdoch’s cashed-up interloper and the Kerry Packer-backed “establishment” Australian Rugby League, Paul Vautin coached a team of misfits and outcasts to a famous State of Origin clean-sweep over New South Wales Blues.
This is not that story.
Because that story will never be forgotten. Who could forget that? Those feisty rebels, those Bad News Bears, those children of the sugar cane, somehow, unbelievably, on wits and spit and spirit alone, bested the best of the Blues, men who on paper should have owned them. Those ’95 Queensland Maroons, with “Fatty” Vautin’s bust front and centre of the pantheon, their names will live forever.
This story, rather, is a very “un-Queensland” tale of fractured friendships, fear and loathing. This is a tale that turns Origin’s “mate-against-mate” ethos inside out, with Queenslanders turning on fellow Queenslanders, and trust and loyalty and team harmony all casualties of a war that engulfed them all.
In the season after the Miracle in Maroon, the Australian Rugby League (ARL) was a conjoined twin; a 20-team competition featuring Super League and establishment clubs. It was an unhappy mix. Packer-backed Sydney Tigers played News Ltd’s Western Reds. New – South Queensland Crushers – played old – North Sydney Bears. So much money, so much carping, so little common ground. They were bad times at Ridgemont High.
Yet both State of Origin teams would be at full strength when it was agreed the two states should select players from both camps. And in the Vautin-coached Queensland Origin squad, with players from rival Super League and ARL factions thrown together, it was like a forced marriage of dogs and cats.
“In 1995 we’d been told we couldn’t pick the Super League players. In ‘96 everyone was available," Vautin said.
“So we picked nine Brisbane Broncos players, all very good players: Steve Renouf, Kevvy Walters, Allan Langer. And we also had eight of the previous year’s team there as well.
“In my first team talk in ’95, there were young blokes, older blokes, but all bug-eyed and right into it. I did pretty much the same speech in ’96 and I actually saw a couple of players rolling their eyes. Like, ‘here we go’. I actually did my best to get blokes together.”
It didn’t work. Two days before game one, centre Mark Coyne fronted Vautin and told him of a rupture between ARL players and Broncos.
“Mark came up to me and said, ‘Mate, this is torture, we can’t work with these guys’. I said, ‘What are you talking about? He says, ‘The Broncos, mate. They won’t even talk to us!’
Don't stand so close to me: Paraphrasing Brisbane Broncos players' attitude to Mark Coyne ahead of the 1996 State of Origin series.
Until then Vautin hadn’t noted any schism between the players – to him they were all Queenslanders first, club players a distant second.
But once Coyne made him see it, he couldn’t un-see it. He also worked out that some players didn’t rate him as a coach. This was backed by feedback from inside and outside the camp.
“The Broncos blokes were like, ‘Fatty’s not good enough, the coach should be Wayne Bennett, he’s the greatest coach’, all that. I was getting that sort of feedback.
"And I’d say I’m not coaching the Broncos, I’m not coaching a club side. I’m coaching Queenslanders.
“It just wasn’t the same as the year before. But then I wasn’t trying to replicate the year before. I knew I had different players and I treated them all equally. I said you’re all Queenslanders, you’re all the same to me. But, mate, it was a massively troubled camp and it wasn’t a great series.”
Following the third match, won 15-14 by the Blues to complete the whitewash, Vautin received empathy from an unlikely source – NSW coach, Phil Gould.
“In ’95, ‘Gus’ was the first bloke on the field to come up and say, ‘Congratulations on what you did, I’m happy for you’. After the third game in ’96 he came up to me on the field and said, ‘Mate, I feel for you. Because I saw your players, I saw footage of you talking to them at Lang Park, as a team. And I was looking at the players watching you, and I’m telling you, a few of them weren’t even listening.’
"It was just an observation by him about our team. And he was talking about some of the Broncos players. And of course we were beaten three-nil.
“Of course there was also NSW’s team, with all their Super League players – Brad Fittler, Laurie Daley, Andrew Johns.
"But no – it wasn’t that enjoyable.”
Tomorrow: Part 2: 1997
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