Trading the scrum for scrubs

Trading the scrum for scrubs

Former Wallaby and now Melbourne-based surgeon Bill Campbell was one of the last of a generation of players to combine on-field achievement with a successful career away from the game, reports Ian Gilbert.

If the preparations for a World Cup are tough, imagine how hard it is to retire prematurely from a team you are pretty sure will win the thing.

But that's what Bill Campbell did. In early 1991, with Australia gearing up for what would prove to be a successful quest to raise the Webb Ellis trophy for the first time, the Wallabies' vice-captain quit at the age of 29 - the age lock-forwards were considered to be in their prime.


"I thought that we would probably win the '91 World Cup," said Campbell, "but it was a long way from starting at the first squad camp - and I had been in the Test team then - to 'take me forward to the end of the year, I'm going to be in the Test team in the final of the World Cup'. There's a lot can happen over that time and that carrot just wasn't strong enough."

For Campbell, rugby, family and a flourishing career in medicine had always been a juggling act, and ultimately medicine was to prove too demanding - even now he works 70-hour weeks as the visiting vascular surgeon at the Alfred and Royal Melbourne hospitals, a post that brought him to Victoria in 1999.

The day after his retirement announcement, Campbell bought his books to study for his surgeon's exams. "I sat my surgical primary the day after Australia won the World Cup and I thought, 'I better pass'."

Campbell, who won the first of his 22 caps in 1984, was part of an era of Australian forwards that set new standards for the pack. Standing 202 centimetres tall and tipping the scales at 118 kilograms, his physical presence was commanding, yet allied to athleticism.

At a time when few international second rows topped 193 centimetres, the Australian forward pack that took the field in its first game of the 1987 World Cup boasted four players that topped 195.

Yet the former Queensland captain also belonged to an era whose currency was camaraderie rather than capitalism.

While professionalism means today's stars are financially secure, Campbell belonged to a perhaps more-rounded generation of players, for whom rugby was not all-consuming.

Indeed, how many Wallabies would now take time out to complete a post-graduate year at Oxford University?

Campbell headed to England straight after the 1987 World Cup on a one-year Kobe Steel scholarship. Once, the quadrangles of Oxbridge were a breeding ground for England internationals; that was on the wane by 1987, but Campbell did not lack for fellow high flyers. The Oxford XV that year was captained by fellow Wallaby Bill Calcraft and included All Black half-back David Kirk, Ireland's Brendan Mullin and future internationals Rob Egerton (Australia) and Victor Ubogu (England).

But even in those days, amateur tradition and the clamour for more professional attitudes were proving uneasy bedfellows. For the '87 World Cup, the Wallabies trained in the afternoon to fit around coach Alan Jones's radio commitments. In these days of meticulously calculated regimes, it might seem a bit slapdash, but Campbell rejects the notion the Wallabies, who lost in the semi-final to France in one of the most exciting games in the tournament's history, were a little underdone.

"I think when the first World Cup came along, not a lot of us knew what it was going to take to win a World Cup. The people who did know and prepared the best were probably the New Zealanders, and they won it. If we had have won that (French game), people would have been saying . . . we weren't far off the mark."

After Oxford, Campbell regained his place in the national team, playing against the '89 British Lions and in the Wallabies team that ended the All Blacks' winning streak in 1990. The brutality of the Lions series, for which Campbell was the Wallabies' vice-captain, sticks in the craw. After being swamped by the Wallabies in the first Test, the Lions set out to intimidate.

"What I found was they played the man," said Campbell. "With the All Blacks, if you were in the way and they wanted to get to the ball, then they'd tread on you, but it was just a bit different. I think the Lions felt we were not as hard and so they saw that as a weakness; they knew that we were very skilled and went for where they thought they could make a difference."

In the Queensland game, Campbell came in for special treatment from opposite number Bob Norster. The Welshman, conceding a good eight centimetres in height, decided to even up the contest by clobbering Campbell at every opportunity.

"I got embroiled in a bit of this because in the after-match interviews someone said, 'How many times did you get thumped in the lineouts?' and I said, 'Well, how many lineouts were there?', because it was just a very physical game and they were menacing. Certainly as a group they had the skills to be able to do that and we probably didn't and that made a difference."

Nowadays, father-of-four Campbell's rugby interests lie in the endeavours of his son Alexander - whose aptitude for the game and 196-centimetre frame have resulted in him representing Victoria under 16s - and, of course, following the Wallabies.

Of this year's World Cup, Campbell says: "I think this is the hardest one to call and I feel that I can't go past the support of the Wallabies because they do have a good track record in world cups. History is part of everything and when people have created history, that breeds a confidence that they know how to handle the tournament."


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