Whatever the voice, messages are mixed

IF David Campese and Michael Lynagh were singing from the same hymn sheet as the Wallabies dominated the last decade of the amateur era, their volume settings could not have been more different.

- CHRIS HEWETT

There was no escaping the racket generated by Campese as he roared his green-and-gold hosannas at a decibel level more commonly associated with Led Zeppelin, but you needed the ears of a bat to hear Lynagh’s quiet verses, whispered like a man at prayer.

Yet for all the contrasts of character and temperament, these titans of Australian rugby shared a desire to play as often as humanly possible. Just ask the British and Irish Lions of 1989, who, by the time they had completed their trek, were heartily sick of the sight of them — not because they hadn’t enjoyed pitting themselves against two acknowledged masters of the sport or chewing the fat with them at the bar, but because they were impossible to shake off.

Both men squared up to the visitors on five occasions during that 12-match trip. That’s right, FIVE. They featured in each of the three Tests; they paired up on the last weekend when a cobbled-together Anzac XV ran down the Lions curtain in Brisbane; and most pertinently for present purposes, they turned out for their state sides in the opening weeks of the tour-Campese for New South Wales, Lynagh for Queensland.

This kind of thing was the rule rather than the exception back then: as late as 1993, when Gavin Hastings and his Lions were chasing the rainbow in New Zealand, the very best of the locals were happy — correction: desperate — to take a swipe at the visitors whenever an opportunity presented itself.