St Helen’s ArchivePreserving the past for the future
Three
Transcript:
This is part three of the five part audio trail following the story of the Australian rugby team’s tours to the UK, and their visits to Wales and specifically, St Helen’s. This part moves to the tour of 1975-76, some seventeen years and three other tours since the tour of 1958-59 explored in the previous part.
To speak of those other tours, the Wallabies toured in 1966-67, where they once again met Swansea at St Helens on the 26th November 1966, where they once again lost - 9 to 8. Interestingly the tourists would win their test match against the Welsh side just a week later, 14 - 11. The following tour of 1968 saw the Wallabies only play a short series against Ireland and Scotland. The third and final tour between 1958-59 and the topic of this part of the trail 1975, was in 1973 where Australia once again came to St Helen’s to draw with the Swansea side on the 3rd of November - 9 - 9. That same tour the tourists would lose to Wales and England in the November, 24 - 0 and 20 - 3, respectively, but they would win against Italy at the end of the tour 59 - 21.
After a less than stellar few tours over the years since 1958-59, the Australian side would visit St Helen’s again on the 29th November 1975. This time beating the ‘All Whites’ 12 - 6. However, of their five test matches, the Wallabies would lose three of them, losing 3 - 10 to Scotland, 3 - 28 to Wales, and 6 - 23 to England. They would defeat Ireland and the USA, 20 - 10 and 24 - 12 respectively.
The material legacy of this tour is a minor one. The St Helen’s archive has a ticket within this Australian display from the game on the 29th of November. This Grandstand ticket was for a committee member, who entered the ground through the players entrance on Mumbles road.
A following tour in 1981-82 once again saw mixed results for the Wallabies taking their only test win against Ireland, but they did once again defeat Swansea 12 - 6 at St Helens on the 28th of November 1981. That All Whites side had lost just twice in nineteen matches and so there was reportedly some confidence from the Swansea pack going into the game.
The following part of this trail, an exploration of two different jerseys from the next of the Australian tours, in 1984. Thanks to the corrective work performed at the St Helen’s archive, with special thanks to Michael Fahey, we now know we hold both the Swansea jersey and the Australian jersey from the same game. Do follow on to the next part to find out more. Please don’t forget to press next.