Nick Farr-Jones: The Regret of Not Beating the Lions
Former Australian captain Nick Farr-Jones, a world champion, has revealed that his biggest regret in his distinguished career is not having managed to beat the British and Irish Lions in a series. Farr-Jones urges the Wallabies to seize the opportunity in Saturday’s first Test in Brisbane.
Despite the 36 years since Australia’s defeat to the Lions by 2-1, Farr-Jones still laments the loss of the opportunity to overcome the best of Great Britain and Ireland.
“Yes, it bothers me,” Farr-Jones commented. “When the Lions come, only once every 12 years, you have an opportunity. And if I have any regret about the game, it’s that we didn’t beat them.”
Nick Farr-Jones
Following the Wallabies’ 30-12 victory in the first Test of 1989, they lost the controversial “Battle of Ballymore” 19-12, where the Lions leveled the series in Brisbane.
The way the Wallabies succumbed in the brutal second Test haunts Farr-Jones.
The Lions devised a plan to subdue Australia’s scrum-half and captain.
“And it worked wonderfully,” he admitted.
Nick Farr-Jones
El árbitro separa al medio scrum de los Lions, Rob Jones, y al medio scrum de los Wallabies, Nick Farr-Jones, después de una pelea durante la Batalla de Ballymore de 1989. Mark Leech/Getty ImagesFarr-Jones recalled that winking and sending a kiss to the Lions’ hooker, Brian Moore, was a mistake.
“After that, he destroyed me and the rest of the forwards too,” he said.
“They had a team that included three police officers, three bobbies, (Wade) Dooley, (Paul) Ackford, (Dean) Richards, as well as Finlay Calder, ‘Mad Dog’ Moore.”
“I think the only one who probably wasn’t a fighter on that team was David Sole, the Scottish prop.
“You had Mickey Skinner. It was a tough team and they would have been sitting two weeks before the first and second Tests, and they would have said: ‘What are we going to do?’
“Let’s beat them up, and how about we start with the captain.”El medio scrum de los Wallabies, Nick Farr-Jones, realiza una patada durante el primer Test contra los British and Irish Lions en 1989. Billy Stickland /Allsport“He’s a small guy. We can beat him up. His game will implode, the team will fall apart around him, and somehow, that happened.”
“So I congratulate you on the tactics.”
Farr-Jones pointed out that Wallabies legends such as Tim Horan and Phil Kearns, winners of two World Cups, never had the opportunity to face the Lions and hopes that Joe Schmidt’s 2025 class will seize the opportunity ahead of them.
The defining moment of the 19-18 defeat in the 1989 series remains David Campese’s pass to Greg Martin in the Australian try area, which led to the Lions’ winning try.
“So, looking back, the cracks in the ceiling would widen at three in the morning because we should have won that series. There’s no doubt about that, and we blew it,” Farr-Jones recalls.
“And I’m not talking about the Campo incident or anything like that. We had another 79 minutes to win that game.”
“We should never have lost it. You wake up and you really regret it because, as happened in the World Cups, we had a second chance.”
He helped the Wallabies complete the legendary grand slam in 1984 with victories over England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, also participated in the successful Bledisloe Cup series against New Zealand and crowned his career by lifting the Webb Ellis Cup alongside the Queen at Twickenham in 1991.
The other professional disappointments that come close to losing out to the Lions were not winning a top-tier championship in 14 seasons with the University of Sydney and seeing his great friend and teammate Tim Gavin miss the ’91 World Cup due to injury.
