On August 21, 1993 the international rugby career of Nick Farr-Jones came to an end with a series winning 19-12 victory over the South Africans. To the standing ovation of the Sydney Football Stadium crowd and his fellow players, Nick farewelled the game.
In his ten seasons with the Australian Wallabies the halfback had come a long way, notching up sixty-three test appearances - thirty-six times leading his country out as captain. Despite this glory, Nick Farr-Jones' rugby beginnings were not as auspicious as its conclusion.
As a schoolboy at Newington College in Sydney's inner west, Nick was commendable in just about every sport he tried - captaining his teams in rugby, athletics, swimming and tennis. Amid all this sporting success, however, he experienced the disappointment of failing to make the First XV rugby side.
Continuing to Sydney University to study law, Nick joined their well-established rugby club and began making up for the previous year's disappointment. After the trial matches, the coach gathered all the under-twenty-one-year-old players and read the team for the First Colts: '...Halfback: Nick Farr-Jones...'
'When I didn't make the Firsts at school,' Nick remembers, 'I had to start wondering if maybe I was already turning into one of those schoolboy athletes who never do anything once they get older, so I was just delighted that I'd climbed back into a Firsts side.'
Nick was integral to the First Colts who won the premiership that year and, as a result, was promoted to the First Grade side the following year, debuting on television against the famous Randwick. Over the next couple of years, Uni didn't have the most successful time playing their game and in 1983 were relegated to Second Division. This was a disaster for the club, and a major hurdle in Farr-Jones' rugby path. He had as much chance of being selected for representative honours from a Second Division club as when he was at school - almost none.
Amazingly, despite not being one of the higher ranking half backs in Sydney, Nick managed to find himself selected for the Sydney tour to Europe in 1984 after a selector had chanced to see him play in the combined Second Division side. That year Nick also donned his first green and gold jersey playing for the Australian Universities team during a five week European tour. But the best was yet to come.
In May 1984, the new Australian rugby coach, Alan Jones, announced the new look Wallaby squad for the season: '...Nick Farr-Jones...' The young sportsman was one step closer to his dream, and on the following Fijian tour debuted with a man-of-the-match performance against the Eastern Selection. Farr-Jones' first test cap, however, didn't come until the first game of the famous 1984 Grand Slam tour, playing against England. Over the following ten years Nick's remarkable rugby career unfolded.
The 1984 Wallabies went on the win every match of their Gram Slam tour, beating England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Nick played in every test match that tour and also scored his first test try in the victory over Scotland.
Farr-Jones established himself within the Wallabies with a bang. Over the next two seasons he played in all twelve tests, scoring four tries and contributing to victories over Canada, Fiji, Italy, France, Argentina and New Zealand. The highlight of these years, though, was the series victory over the All Blacks, recapturing the Bledisloe Cup. After the matches, the Australian newspaper summed up: 'Nick Farr-Jones heads our rugby honour roll for'86, and can rightfully lay claim to being the world's best halfback.'
In 1987, Farr-Jones got his first taste of representative captaincy when he was named as head of the New South Wales side, displacing Wallaby great, Simon Poidevin. The coach at the time, Paul Dalton, explains: 'I always saw Farr-Jones as a natural leader. He was the brain, the architect; he could read a game, decide what had to be done and have the others follow. He was already doing that from his position at halfback, but I wanted him to have full authority, to be captain.'
Nick's international captaincy didn't come until 1988, after a tumultuous year in which the Wallabies lost five straight games and Alan Jones was dumped as coach, replaced by Bob Dwyer. Legend has it that Dwyer, who had coached Australia immediately before Jones, began the first Wallaby training session with the words: 'Now, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted...'
Despite the uncertainty surrounding the appointment of Farr-Jones as captain, history has vindicated Dwyer's decision, Nick becoming Australia's most successful captain.
Under Farr-Jones' captaincy the Wallabies reached their heyday, even though it took a couple years to get there, with disappointing losses to New Zealand and England in 1988 and the British Lions in 1989. In all, the Wallabies won only five of their thirteen matches in those two years, but the good times were soon to come.
In 1990, in the third Bledisloe Cup Test, the Wallabies brought the All Blacks' four year, twenty-three-game winning streak to an end with 21-9 win on New Zealand soil. The local Otago Times wrote: 'The greatest off all was Nick Farr-Jones, their captain. The great captains, the great halfbacks, have vision, and that is what Farr-Jones displayed in the Wellington wind and rain. He saw the ground as a chessboard. He made all the right moves and pulled the right strings as he urged even more from his men.' Australia had won the last Test for 1990 and were ready for the main challenge in 1991, the Rugby World Cup.
In the warm-up to the World Cup, the Wallabies knocked over Wales, England and New Zealand, but the real event didn't start until later that year. The Australians made it through to the quarterfinals of the Rugby World Cup, with only a knee injury to Farr-Jones in one of the pool matches slowing them down. This injury again caused him to leave the field early in the quarterfinal against Ireland. Sitting on the sidelines, Nick watched his team nearly lose the match but then come from behind to score in the dying moments and win 19-18. On to the semifinal, and the Wallabies had an extraordinary 16-6 victory over the All Blacks - New Zealand losing for only the third time since 1987. Australia had earned their way into the 1991 Rugby World Cup final.
On the first Saturday afternoon in November 1991, Australian rugby was about to have a moment. The famous Twickenham in London was packed with 60,000 fans, hundreds of millions more were watching on television around the world. The players from Australia and England assembled on the ground and, after meeting Queen Elizabeth II, joined in the singing of their national anthems. Eighty minutes after the first whistle blew the Wallabies had won 12-6. Amid hugs and cheers, Nick ascended the stairs to the Queen to receive the William Webb Ellis trophy. The Australians were world champions.
Farr-Jones and the other players were bombarded with accolades from all sources. English magazine Rugby News wrote: 'The Wallabies' triumph proves conclusively that nice guys can win. The courtesy and manners shown by men like Bob Dwyer and his captain Nick Farr-Jones were exemplary. These two and their colleagues were the finest ambassadors for their country. Their rugby matched them, the game and its much cherished reputation was in excellent hands.' Upon returning to Sydney, the city turned out for a tickertape parade to honour the team and at its conclusion the captain was presented with the Key to the City by the Lord Mayor.
After eight years of international rugby only one thing remained that Farr-Jones had not achieved, and his opportunity to do so came a year later in 1992. Twenty-three years after their last meeting, due to their opponents suspension from international sport because of their apartheid government, Australia met South Africa in a game of rugby. Only a win over the Springboks would truly establish Australia as the unquestioned world champions. The South Africans were sure that they would be victorious, but after eighty minutes of football the scoreboard read 26-3, the biggest loss that the Springboks had suffered in one hundred years.
Prior to the Australian victory the All Blacks, which Australia had just beaten 2-1 in a three Test series to reclaim the Bledisloe Cup, were in South Africa to play the home side. A number of kiwi supporters stayed in the same hotel as the Wallabies and enjoyed sitting at the bar loudly pondering how Australia could have been so lucky as to beat New Zealand.
Farr-Jones and teammate Tony Daly thought of a good way to shut them up though: 'Summoning the young hotel page, who carried a large blackboard with messages on it, they told him what to do. He changed his board and headed off to the All Black supporters. Ringing his bell and waving the blackboard, he asked if anyone knew where Lord Bledisloe or Mr William Webb Ellis were. On cue the Wallabies shouted, "They're over here! We've got them both!"'
After the South African victory, Nick Farr-Jones had achieved all that there was to achieve in rugby. One year later, he played his last game at the Sydney Football Stadium, leaving victoriously in front of his home crowd.
Over the ten seasons of Farr-Jones' rugby career, he had some amazing experiences: beating every major rugby playing nation, winning the World Cup and the Bledisloe Cup, and meeting the Queen and Nelson Mandela. However, despite all these amazing experiences, he rates none of them as being more amazing than what happened to him when he was just sixteen.
`I was up at the local pizza shop chasing a couple of ladies after the Cronulla Leagues Club had closed and it so happened that they were Christian girls. The way I could see them again was by turning up at church. They invited me along and I started to go. I heard the gospel, and when you hear the gospel preached in a simple way it's pretty hard not to accept, and for the first time in my life I heard the gospel preached. I thought, "This is irrefutable!" - and not only hearing the gospel, but seeing the way the Spirit moved among these people. There was something that distinguished these people from the people I was mixing with down at the Leagues Club and I wanted a bit of that.'
Over time, Nick became more involved with his new Christian friends and his commitment to follow Christ began to impact on his life, most noticeably by calming is renowned explosive temper. Nick's brother, Simon, remembers one time when he went down to the local pub for a few beers with Nick and some of his friends. `We were all sitting at the table having a beer and these guys were sitting next to us drinking heavily, becoming more and more drunk. They started sliding their empty beer glasses across the table and smashing them into ours.'
'As soon as this started, you could see the look in Nick's eyes - he'd lost it completely - and all of a sudden I thought, "Oh, no, he's going to blow." But it seemed his newfound Christianity was holding him back. And he just said to one of the guys, "Don't do that again. Please don't do that again."'
'So these guys thought that was great and the next guy finishes his glass and slides it across and smashes a glass right next to Nick on the table. So Nick jumps out of his seat, grabs the guy, hurls him against the wall and says, "Listen mate, I'm a Christian first, but I'm getting very angry. If you do that again, I'll kill you."
'The guy just got back into his chair like he was scared stiff and we didn't hear a word from them for the rest of the evening.'
Life as a Christian hasn't always been easy. 'Unfortunately during my ten years with the Wallabies, I began to backslide. I read the Bible and prayed only when I needed to, especially before games. My wife, my mother-in-law and I used to pray together before each game. In retrospect, I now realise how important it is to be in constant contact with the Lord, to be consistently reading his word and constantly seeking his will for your life. If you have a personal relationship with Jesus, you live a righteous life, and you're constantly seeking his will for your life, then you can't go wrong.'
'Sometimes on tour I did things that probably aren't seen as Christian,' Nick admits. `I don't want people running around thinking "Oh, Nick Farr-Jones is a good Christian." I want them to hear that I'm not quite the committed person that they think I am.' Nick describes his Christian life as `a bit of a roller coaster. It hasn't been solid commitment - throwing the cross over the shoulder each day for about four years I was solidly committed, but then for whatever reason I stopped getting up early in the morning to read the bible and I didn't do a lot of praying. But since moving to Paris I've been back into it and I realise that it's the most important thing in my life.'
Nick spent four years in Paris, where we worked in commodities marketing with the Societe Generale bank. Now back in Sydney, he looks forward to the life beyond rugby with his family. `I hope I don't lie back on my deathbed and think, "Nick, there are things which you should have done which you didn't do," and a lot of these are Christian things - I want the Lord to use me. I know the Lord has got plans for me, I'm excited about it, I'm just trying to work out exactly what they are. I hope that I get to the end of my life here on earth and look back and say, "I sought the will of God and tried to do that in my life."'
Nick Farr Jones
