The British and Irish Lions are training this week at a plush private school in the Melbourne suburb of Kew, the boarding boys returning to their dorms after the holidays to find strange company on the campus. Not that many will be aware of the significance of their visitors. “Most won’t even know the difference between rugby union and league,” a schoolmaster says. Where plenty will harbour ambitions of making it to the AFL, with a long list of past Premiership winners to inspire them, notable rugby alumni do not instantly spring to mind. “I think Stirling Mortlock might have gone here,” the member of staff erroneously suggests of a Sydney-sider.
Welcome, then, to Melbourne, a place where rugby union sits someway down the public’s pecking order. This is a wonderful city, particularly for sports fans, with the thicket of arenas within which the Melbourne Cricket Ground is the tallest tree a short walk away from the CBD. It is in that sporting copse that the Australian Open is held each January, while one can quickly find your way to Flemington Racecourse or Albert Park if horsepower is more your thing.
