Stitches in the jersey…

We have a Bledisloe to play, so the Wallabies of 28 September 2024, I’d like to share a quiet word if I may.

As you sit in that Wellington dressing shed, with the tacking of studs beating a drum roll on the concrete as hands clap on the backs of teammates, and as the all-pervading pungency of the Deep Heat and strapping tape pique tension in the air you breathe, I would beg you indulge me a moment. For I want you to take a second to sit with your jersey, look at it, peer into it while you roll its fabric between your fingers. And in that moment of staring into what is now your jersey, one that no one else will ever own in the moments before the Wallabies play the All Blacks for the 179th time, feel its fibre and through that sink into the history of what it captures…

I want you to start with the first time you remember seeing a Wallaby jersey, and that first curious hint of not-quite-understood adrenalin it stirred. Find that childhood joy again. Then I want you to slide forward to that moment you heard your name first read aloud in a Wallabies announcement and re-experience the emotion it pricked.  

Then jump to those visions we all know so well: Radike Samo’s try against the ABs in 2011, Stirling Mortlock’s length of the field in 2003, Toutai Kefu’s try in 2001, see Tim Horan’s try off the over-the-shoulder flick from Campo at the 1991 World Cup, or when Lynagh and Poido chaired Andrew Slack from Eden Park in 1986, and dream back to a brash young David Campese standing up Stu Wilson in 1982.

Then go to the stuff you have likely only heard tales of – I want you to taste the 1979 Bledisloe win and live the famous lap of the SCG after. I want you to smell the turf and sweat in the air as Greg Cornelsen scored his four tries against the ABs in the 3rd test in 1977. I want you to swim in the history of all those famous victories, all the way back to the SCG on 27 June 1910 when Sydney Middleton’s men first beat New Zealand in a test match.

But once you’ve touched those memories, I want you to go beyond the famous faces and victories. Go find the forgotten heroes buried in the stitching of that jersey, for they are there. Say g’day to Gordon Stone who played his one and only test for Australia against the All Blacks in 1938. Stand alongside the proper hard men of Wallaby lore like ‘Wild Bill’ Cerutti in the 1920s & 30s or Simon Poidevin in the 80s & 90s, as the boots and fists flew any time they donned the jersey. Share a moment with the lads who played the last test against the ABs on 15 August 1914 before they went off to fight the Great War. And reach all the way back to Sydney on 15 August 1903 when Stan Wickham’s crew first faced our neighbours from across the ditch.

For these are the Wallabies you now stand among. These are now your peers. Be this your first test or your 100th, these are the legends with whom you now commune. These are the men who have put their souls into that jersey you now feel in your hands. Know they have all left marks on the jersey and so put stitches into the very fabric of what you now wrap your yourself in – just as you will now add your stitch to its story today. And know that your stitch will live there irrevocably, forever, to then be passed on to whoever wears that number next. For that is both the privilege and the price of the jersey: you wear it only a moment before it moves on.

So, as you steel yourself for what now comes, know I envy your place, your chance, your honour to do what you are now about to do But also know that I pray. I pray the stitch you’re about to put in the fabric of our national jersey is worthy: worthy of those who went before you, worthy of your efforts to make it there this day, but most of all, worthy of those who will come on the days after you.

Thus, forget winning. Forget losing. Focus only on what you do next, in each moment. Be smart. Play hard. Run straight. Tackle brave.

But above all, make your stitch worthy.