History - Rorkes Drift - Wagstaff's Version

Ten men and 30 minutes to go! But never had I nine such men with me on a football field as I had that day We were in our own half all the time and most of it seemed to be on our own line. But we stuck it. Our forwards gave their all. In the scrums, the remnants of the pack that was left did its job and in the loose the men who had been brought out tackled as fiercely and finely as the backs did. As often happened in such circumstances, we continued to win the ball from the scrums. Holland, Ramsdale and Chilcott were heroes.

There were 20 minutes left when I managed to cut through when we were defending as usual, and going to John Johnson's wing I gave him the ball with only fullback Hallett to beat. Chick, a forward on the wing, went away with it, but then none of us dreamt that we were to witness the scoring of as wonderful a try as Test football will ever produce. A few yards from Hallett, Johnson put the ball on the ground and began to dribble it. He had half the length of the field to go but he did it. And the ball never left his toes. It might have been fled by a piece of string to his feet, so perfectly did he control it. No soccer international could have dribbled the ball better than did Johnson on the Sydney Cricket Ground that afternoon.

Alf Wood kicked the goal and there we were, 14-3. Billy Hall recovered and came back for the last ten minutes to help us in a defence that was successful until the last few minutes, when Sid Deane scored Australia's second try to make it 14-6. But the victory was ours and the Australian crowd gave us full credit for it. They swung around to our side in the second half and they were with us to the end, cheering us on in inspiring fashion. When the final whistle sounded we were done. We had gone to the last gasp and were just about finished.