Here's hoping for a bit of Brumbies drama

THE undercard, those matches away from the Test series, is usually very thin and underwhelming on a Lions tour of Australia but the one team and franchise that has consistently provided a bit of drama and interest is the ACT Brumbies.

- BRENDAN GALLAGHER

Which is strange because they are the youngest team in Australia and the side most difficult to place. To this day I’m still not sure I could look at a Google Earth view of Australia and immediately pinpoint Canberra, the capital of the Australian Capital Territories (ACT). And T’m normally good at that stuff.

For the record, Canberra is 287 km southwest of Sydney and 466 km northwest of Melbourne. ACT itself is slightly smaller than Luxembourg and consists of the Namadgi National Park - the highest, coldest part of Australia -and Canberra, the purpose-built capital rather anonymous administrative centre of Australia. And that’s about it.

There is no reason really that they should have spawned such a decent rugby team other than a lot of the educational elite in the country — those who might play rugby union rather than the scores of other sports on tap in Australia ~ migrated to Canberra during the amateur days.

That was the kick start and things gradually flowered from there with the biggest progression coming at the dawn of professionalism when by happy chance the best coach Australia have ever produced — Rod MacQueen - just happened to begin his work with the Brumbies and a freakishly talent group of players emerged for him to fashion into something special.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves a little. The first time ACT warranted a game against the Lions was as recently as 1989. Up until that point, any likely lads in the area came under the New South Wales Country XV umbrella.