David Campese

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David Campese : biography

21 October 1962 –

In his book, Running Rugby, Mark Ella described Campese’s desire to flaunt his talents and be a showman: "If Campese wanted to, I am sure he could have sprinted for the corner and scored the try. Instead, he ran straight at Ackerman. The Welshman obviously knew enough about Campese to realise it was useless to try and tackle him front-on. Instead, he did what I suggested earlier that any defender should do against Campese – he ran with him. It was then that Campese began to zigzag, forcing Ackerman to zigzag, too, looking over one shoulder after another to see which way Campese was heading. I was following about 20 metres behind and could not believe what was happening. I have no doubt that Campese turned it on to make a personal point with Ackerman. When the defence eventually closed in on him, Campese flicked a pass over his shoulder to Michael Hawker, who scored the try."

On an ABC special entitled, The Rise and Rise of Australian Rugby, Ackerman admitted Campese could have passed him at any stage if he wanted to: "My line of thinking was is all I was trying to do in that time was to stall him. At the end of the day if he wanted to Campo could have just burnt me off on the outside. But I was just looking for a bit of cover and as it happened I did stall him and he didn’t score that one. I was the player he made a fool of if anybody needs to remember."

Campo’s Corner

"David Campese liked to play his rugby of the highwire – without a safety net", Gordon Bray once wrote, "When he slips, the result can be catastrophic."

In the 1989 series against the British and Irish Lions, which Australia were expected to win, Campese gifted a soft try to the Lions in the third test when he recklessly tried to run the ball from his own try line. This resulted in the Lions winning the test as well as the series.

The part of the pitch where Campese lost the ball became known as "Campo’s Corner". The patch of turf at the Paddington end of the Sydney Football Stadium, on the eastern side of the ground, where a wayward pass gave the Lions a try and catapulted Campese into controversy. The event itself was Campese’s career low point for which he is still criticised to this day.

The Australian side had never won a series against the Lions at the time, and there was a general feeling amongst the Australian players that was about to change. Australia defeated the Lions easily in the first match, by utilising the boot of Michael Lynagh to make the Lions forwards run around the paddock. Campese however, played a diminished role in the win due to these tactics, a trend that continued for much of the series. Australia lost the second game in a violent affair, leaving the series tied at 1–1, and set the stage for the horrific moment that is often associated with Campese’s fallibility.

Australia had struggled to a 12–9 lead early in the second half of the third game when Lions five-eighth Rob Andrew missed with an attempted dropped goal. At that point, the game was being decided between the boots of Michael Lynagh and the Lions’ Gavin Hastings. Campese had hardly seen the ball when he caught the ball in his in-goal and started off with a mind to counterattack. He was immediately confronted by Lions winger Ieuan Evans before throwing a loose pass to fullback Greg Martin, who was completely unaware of Campese’s surprising intentions. The ball struck Martin on the shoulder and bounced away. Evans, who had the mere job of falling on the ball, played the opportunist to score in a moment of complete disaster.

There was a sense of horror about what Campese had just done. Standard procedure on such an occasion is to simply ground the ball in the in-goal, which would have allowed Australia to restart play twenty-two metres downfield. With his tremendous boot, Campese could also have run the ball out of the in-goal and simply booted the ball far downfield and into touch. Rather than playing the percentages, Campese had failed in a seemingly mindless and illogical attempt to do something creative. However, Jack Pollard, author of Australian Rugby: The Game And The Players, always maintained that Campese’s idea that day was a good one. Pollard happened to be sitting adjacent to where the incident occurred, so he had a good view of it. He said that the Lions’ defence on that side of the field was under-manned and that there was a real opportunity for a counterattack, which Campese obviously recognised. If Martin had taken the pass, Pollard said, Australia might have scored instead of the Lions. So in Pollard’s view it was a clever move – just poorly executed. "It was my fault because I tried to step inside and pass at once, thinking that Evans would come with me," Campese wrote in his autobiography On a Wing and a Prayer. "In fact, when I passed, he was in between me and Martin, and when I threw such a hopeless pass he had a simple job in touching it down…. I still think the idea was perfectly sound, it was just that the execution was wrong."