Catching up with the Legendary Reds and Wallabies Captain: Andrew Slack

Earlier this week, I had a great chat with legendary Queenslander/world-beating Wallaby, Andrew Slack! Not being able to catch up in person, we caught up using FaceTime and had a great conversation.

We talked about his memories playing rugby for Queensland and Australia and he had some great advice for rugby players today! He also told us which sport he would have preferred to play over rugby, as well as which Queensland Red he sees as a future Wallabies star.

I hope you enjoy reading our chat!

Hey Andrew, thanks for taking time to chat! For those that don’t know, what have you spent your time doing, since your retired from coaching rugby?

Well, coaching's difficult and you’ve got to be absolutely passionate about the game to be a good coach. I liked the game, but I liked the people more. I didn’t fit with coaching to be honest.  But anyway, to answer your question, I was a school teacher from 1977 to 1985, worked for the Courier-Mail for a year in 1985 and then Morgans Stockbrokers in 1986 and 1987.  From 1988 until my retirement in 2016 I worked with Channel 9.

I had one year off from that when I was the full time head coach for the Queensland Reds In 2003.

You played 133 games for Queensland, which is legendary! To ask for one top highlight would be silly. Do you mind sharing your top three Queensland memories? Or top 5 even, if you like...

Top 3 or 5… Ok! Beating New South Wales is always pretty good. Early on, from a footy perspective, Queensland had been getting beaten by New South Wales for a long time over the years I was playing, which was obviously a long time ago... But in 1976, my first interstate game, we beat New South Wales 42-4 and it became quite a “famous” game, because we turned the fortunes and for years after that, we kept beating New South Wales. So that was number one I suppose.

Another thing… It’s hard to pick highlights… I’d say there tours and the memories from that. In ’78 we went to Japan, Canada and America… the times we had during that trip were wonderful. It was a very good team really and we built on that team and had success for several years to come, including beating the All Blacks, ‘cos the international teams used to come through and play Queensland and New South Wales. We beat the All Blacks in 1980 I think. But by and large, my best memories are the tours and the times we had with the players I played with. It’s hard to find three or four or five. There’s a lot! But footy wise, I guess beating New South Wales and the All Blacks is up there.

You’ve spent a number of years as a coach in Queensland. Do you have a favourite coaching memory?

I do, I’ve got an easy answer to that one. I was an assistant coach for a few years, which was good. I enjoyed it. But the one year I had as had coach in 2003, I didn’t love it, but I had one highlight. We played the Stormers, I think they were called “Western Province” then, in Cape Town, I think it was Super 12 at the time. And we had a hooker sent off in the first five minutes, Tai McIsaac was his name. So we were down to fourteen men, without a hooker, in front of a Newlands crowd, which is pretty parochial, a bit like playing Queensland down at Ballymore back in the old days, or playing here at Suncorp now. But anyway, I think we were down to fourteen men and down by seven or eight by the time he got sent off, only five minutes. Anyway, we one the game.

I think we won by around ten or fifteen points. I remember Elton Flatley scoring a try and Julian Huxley. It was one of those games when everything went right, so 14 Queensland beat 15 South Africans.

That is by some margin, my favourite coaching memory and after that, they all come a bad second ‘cos they weren’t many good ones.

Let’s talk about your time playing with the Wallabies! You captained the Wallabies to a lot of great victories! Let’s get this out of the way... when you won the Bledisloe cup in New Zealand, you held the cup up wearing an All Blacks jersey. Care to explain?

[Laughs.] Yes I do care to explain smarty. [Laughs.] So what happened… today, everyone gets a jersey now with the date. I assume they just keep the jersey - one every game. But back then, we didn’t.. we got a jersey to keep at the end of the tour and if you made the test matches, you could keep the jersey after the three games. There were three test matches. So you had one jersey, plus another.

So that third test was at the end of the series and the tradition was you just found your opposite number and swapped your jersey, which is exactly what I did with Joe Stanley. So I’m not thinking “what’s going to happen at the end…” and holding the Bledisloe cup and all that, or else I would never had taken it off. [Laughs.]

People with All Blacks jerseys have held it enough times, so I’d rather I’d had an Australian jersey on. Alan Jones, one of the coaches, got stuck into me years later, but you don’t think of these things at the time.

What was the greatest, or most memorable victory for you, while playing as a Wallaby?

I think probably [pauses] the day I wore the All Black jersey! [Laughs.] So the third test in Auckland in 1986. No Australian team has beaten the All Blacks [at Eden Park] since that day. That’s probably number one, in terms of the hardest thing we achieved. 

Beating Scotland in Murrayfield in 1984, which competed the Grand Slam was probably second, that was a great thing and we felt very elated. But the harder job was probably beating the All Blacks in New Zealand. So the third test in ’86 was probably my greatest on-field playing memory.

Can we go right back to the start of your rugby journey. What first inspired you to play the game?

I was a cricket lover as a kid, more than rugby. I was probably more interested in rugby league, but I went to Villanova where in grade four I played my first rugby game in 1964, it was "Brontosaurus" versus "Tyrannosaurus Rex" and from then we just played rugby at school. Then in 1970, a friend of mine from Villanova who played at U-15s Souths said “why don’t you have a few games at Souths”, which I did. I finished school in ’72 and went and joined Souths in 1973 and I’ve got many lifelong friends from my association with Souths, and now with Queensland and Australia. So it was really just circumstances, I went to a school that played rugby and my friends played and I joined in. But it’s never actually been my favourite sport! I love it, but cricket was always number one.

I used to pray my prayers and I’d pray that I’d play cricket for Australia, but I don’t think God was listening, or he was only half listening!

Who was your first rugby hero?

Hero’s not the word I’d use, but that’s a bit philosophical, I won’t get into it… Probably Paul McLean, who was the guy we all looked up to when I was first in the Queensland team. He was the five-eighth, the sort to ‘super-star’ of the time. I ended up playing with him and we’re very, very close friends and now he’s interim CEO and chairman, he’s got a lot to put up with and I don’t agree with everything he’s done. But he was probably the guy that I admired most when I first coming into rugby and luckily enough, when I got into the team, he was one of the guys that really helped me as well. He’s probably the first that comes to mind by there’s a bunch of others who can probably be in that race as well.

What are some major ways that rugby has changed, since you last played?

Well the major thing is obviously that we played in an amateur time when we had a job and trained Tuesdays and Thursdays and would go away for long tours and that was all a bit more difficult. But in terms of the game itself, I think the players are much more physically adept, much stronger than we were. I never did gym work, I could bench press two rum and cokes at the end of my career! We didn’t sort of have time for that, so we just trained as footballers, not as athletes really. That’s changed enormously.

A lot of the laws have changed. Some of them have made it a better game, but there are some that have made it, of late, a worse game. So I think we need to go back and look at some of the older laws and make a few changes. The foundations are the same, but we’ve got to keep tinkering, because I don’t think we see as many really entertaining games of rugby, as we should, with what the game has to offer. The laws and the interpretation of the laws, I think can muck it up from time to time.

What advice would you give to professional players, regarding life after rugby?

Well, I’d give it to them while they playing rugby. And that would be just to accept how lucky you are, one needs to not get caught in the bubble of being a person that is anything better than anyone else, because they happen to be able to kick a footy or run faster or whatever. I don’t think it happens all that much in rugby, it happens in some of the other sports… but we need to just be conscious that ultimately, although it is a profession, it is still a game and enjoyment is a key for the players and the fans.

The other thing, it’s a hard thing to do when your younger, to think about when you’re older… particularly when you’re playing rugby and getting a lot of money to play. You’re not going to be thinking about what you’re going to when your forty and have a family. I’d just advise that that they need to think about things other than rugby and have something other than rugby, when you’re not able to play the game.

Thanks very much for taking time to chat! It’s an interesting time for rugby and I’m glad we have great people like you around adding to the discussion about where we go next.

Well, it’s a pleasure Tom and as I’ve said to a few people over the last few weeks, I’m by nature very optimistic and rugby will sort itself out. It’s a bit messy at the moment, but they’ve got a lot of good people involved who all want it to be as good as it can be. So I’m confident rugby will be fine. All we need is a couple of Eals’s and Horan's to win us a World Cup again and we’ll be laughing! 

Talking about the future… are there any particular players you’ve got your eye on?

Well, I do think this young Queensland side is looking terrific. McReight, Wilson, Liam and all the forwards, but one guy I’ve liked for a couple of years, who I think could really make a big difference for the Wallabies is Tait McDermott. I haven’t quite fully understood why Brad Thorne didn’t start him, in the last couple of games before Covid-19 stopped things. But he’s a player who’d be very good to play with and the fans love to watch. I think Queensland have a strong foundation now and he’s going to be one of the stars, I reckon.