Former WA rugby player Rob Barugh reflects on 2001 meeting with British and Irish Lions at the WACA Ground

Not many West Australians can claim to have scored a try against the British and Irish Lions, but Hale School teacher and rugby coach Rob Barugh can. And 24 years on, Barugh remembers clear as day the shock that followed him crossing the try line at the WACA Ground — or as he puts it, being in the right place at the right time. Two Australian tours ago, well before the birth of Western Force, it was a WA representative side that hosted the Lions on their 2001 trip Down Under. What transpired, as a Lions team made up of superstars such as Brian O’Driscoll, Ronan O’Gara and Phil Vickery faced a team of semi-professionals and amateurs, entered the history books for the wrong reasons. The Lions ran up a cricket score at the WACA, winning 116-10 and scoring a record 18 tries, 13 of which were converted by O’Gara. That which was also a record, as was the 106-point margin of victory. Even so, for the WA team on the wrong side of the hiding, it was a game they will always treasure. “There’s a tinge of embarrassment with the score line, and it really was a cricket score, but I just push that to the back,” Barugh told The Sunday Times. “I don’t dwell too much on the scoreline, but just to be out there and playing for your State, it was a pretty proud moment for all of us. “You had an incredibly powerful professional outfit playing against an amateur outfit, and it was definitely reflected in the score line.” Barugh said the WA side were by no means pushovers, and he himself had represented the Australian sevens side and played for Randwick in NSW. But the reality of the situation was best summed up by the fact most, if not all, of his team on that fateful June night had to work their day jobs hours before kick-off. “We were so blue collar, most of us were tradesmen,” Barugh said. “There were guys laying bricks, there were chippies working as roof carpenters that day, they did a few hours in the morning on the job, and then we met up in the early afternoon at the WACA and went into the change rooms. “There was a number eight playing there, Scott Quinnell, he was the Welsh captain, a phenomenal rugby player, he sticks out in my memory. “The other guy that played against us was a guy called Dan Luger; he was a monster, and he could move.” Both Quinnell and Luger scored hat-tricks as the Lions trounced WA, but local coach Tom Fearn had given his side a simple goal: to score two tries, which they achieved, with Barugh involved in both. After WA broke from a scrum in the 52nd minute, Barugh fed the ball to Brent Becroft to touch down to get them on the board. It was the first time, after four previous meetings, against the Lions a WA team had scored a try, and they doubled up in the 67th minute when a breakaway ended with a lucky bounce and ensuing pass out to Barugh, who scampered over in delight. “My lasting memory is, I was a bit in shock that I’d scored, so I’m still laying flat on the ground, and for some reason, I’m tapping the grass with both hands in this moment of complete shock,” he said. “My captain, who was a massive unit, his name was Trevor Thomas, he reached down and picked me up one-handed by my jumper, so that he could pull me into an embrace to celebrate the try.” In a full circle moment this week, the Lions will conduct training sessions at Hale School, bringing Barugh face-to-face with the touring side once more.