On a glorious wintry day at Rugby Park in Singleton, two hours drive north of Sydney, a leathery, battle-hardened Steve Merrick stands with his people watching their beloved Singleton Bulls. The last of rugby union’s amateurs, 20 years ago Merrick played an unlikely role in the Wallabies Bledisloe Cup campaign against New Zealand. After the second Test in 1995, he returned to Singleton, where he remains to this day.

“Been a tough one for the Bulls,” says Merrick in a country drawl as a couple of younger players slap him on the back. “You find out about people in seasons like this.”

It has been a lean and dispiriting year for the Singleton Bulls, freshly promoted to the Newcastle & Hunter Premier League but limping to the end of the season at the bottom of the ladder with a record of one win and 12 losses.

Their opponents today are Hamilton who are top of the table with a 12-1 record. On form it should be a bloodbath but the Singleton Bulls have put up spirited resistance and at half-time are down a respectable 27-7.

Club president and backbone Shane Thompson is filling in for the team manager, furiously marking down stats and managing substitutions. In a break in play he recalls the first time he met Merrick. “Steve wasn’t even the best footy player in his family,” says Thompson. His brother Dale was the natural sportsman – a quality league and union player and an A-grade golfer and cricketer. Steve didn’t win the genetic lottery but Thompson remembers his work ethic: “Steve had to work so much harder but it paid off.”

I was brought up to play for enjoyment and I’m equal with my team-mates Steve Merrick

Next year is the Singleton Bulls 50th anniversary, and both Merrick and Thompson agree on the challenges facing the club. With a population of just 25,000 the talent pool is stretched and being a ‘20-pit’ mining town means unstable team selection. “The miners work every second weekend and we lose 10-15 players on shifts,” says Thompson.

The Singleton Bulls have had a tough five years but it wasn’t always the case. With Merrick at scrumhalf they won five premierships. “He was unpredictable, dynamic and a fierce competitor,” says Thompson. “He was already a tough league player and adapted.”

Thompson is proud of the Bulls’ achievements and the boutique ground the club owns. “We carved it out of farm paddocks,” he says. He misses the amateur days where international teams such as the All Blacks, Scotland and Fiji would play and fill the ground. Now they fly in and out of the big cities and he believes “country rugby is poorer for it”.

Thompson winces as Hamilton score another try. He laments the disparity between clubs in which some pay for imported players and others don’t. “We don’t pay anybody.” says Thompson. The global slowdown for coal has meant job losses and with good jobs hard to come by, the Bulls struggle to attract new players.

Merrick coaches the Bulls Under-15s team, which includes his son Beau. He loves working with the youngsters: “Steve comes in whenever we ask and does whatever we ask. A true club man,” says Thompson.

Steve Merrick in the Singleton dressing room after a game, 30 March 1996. Photograph: The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media via Getty Images

Merrick was born in 1968 in Singleton, a small town on the banks of the Hunter River in the heart of coalmining country. His parents Robbie and Jenny both came off farms in Singleton and the Merrick pedigree in the district goes back more than 200 years to the early 1800s.

An accidental rugby union player, he played rugby league until the age of 18 and thought union was “strange”. Heavily influenced by his brother Dale who had recently switched from league, he came down to Rugby Park to watch him play in a Tooheys Cup final against Orange. He was instantly “hooked on the continuity and rucking” and joined the Singleton Bulls second grade team in 1987.

His father was an amateur boxer for Australia and remains a guiding force. “When he came to watch me play he gave me nothing except a nod of the head for my very best game,” he says. “I just worked hard to please mum and dad.”

Merrick took time to add new skills but continued to improve leading to his breakthrough year in 1993 when he was selected for NSW Country against Tonga and South Africa. In 1994 he won NSW Country player of the year and played against Ireland in an Australian XV side in Mt Isa.

We played on a handshake and Steve has my full respect and the respect of the rugby community Graeme Bachop

In 1995, he was not selected for the Wallabies World Cup team, but after Australia’s disastrous quarter-final loss to England he was driving his mining truck when he received a call from Coach Bob Dwyer in South Africa. Merrick hung up, thinking it was a mates prank call. Dwyer called back and asked Merrick to make himself available for the NSW Waratahs to play against Otago in New Zealand.

Merrick played well and kept his spot for two games for NSW against Queensland, winning man-of-the-match at Concord Oval and scoring a try at Ballymore in the return game.

Although he had struck a vein of hot form, he did not expect to displace World Cup scrumhalf George Gregan for the Bledisloe Cup team, which was being announced at Sydney Airport baggage terminal, timed for the return of the NSW team from Queensland.

Coming down the airport escalator, his wife Rebecca was waiting for him. He knew instantly: “I could tell by the look on her face.” he says. Merrick had been selected as Wallaby number 722 to make his debut in a Bledisloe Cup match against the All Blacks in New Zealand on 22 July, 1995.

The rugby union world was shocked that a ‘bolter from the bush’ had unseated Gregan and keenly awaited his debut in front of 50,000 at Eden Park – one of the rugby’s toughest proving grounds and unforgiving terrain for a debutant.

Having missed his first Wallabies training session due to a previous commitment - “I had to bring a mate back to Singo” – a strange thing happened to Merrick after another session he did make it to. He was pulled into a side room to be met by players sitting at a table who wanted to discuss a rebel union competition. They were offering $100,000 to sign as a professional and if it didn’t go ahead he could keep the sign on fee. Easy money.



Merrick, however, burst into laughter.“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” he told them, “I play footy because I want to play footy. That’s it.”

On the morning of the Test match in New Zealand, Merrick’s room-mate and Wallaby legend Tim Horan pulled back the curtains to reveal torrential weather. Merrick recalls Horan looking outside and looking back at him saying coldly: “Your first Test. Eden Park in this weather. I’d jump out the window.”

Horan’s advice was brushed off and Merrick took to the field, where he faced the Haka. Jonah Lomu stared straight at him for the entire war dance, pulling “those New Zealand faces”.

“Lomu was a freak,” says Merrick who was dragged along a few times when targeted by the rampaging winger. The Wallabies came close, losing 28-16 in bad conditions. His Wallaby debut was a blur: “It was like playing 10 minutes of footy, no time, so fast and intense.”

At full-time he sheepishly remembers brokering a deal with the security guard in the tunnel: “I was the only smoker in the side, got my smokes and lit one up behind the cameras.”

His opposing scrumhalf that day was All Blacks legend Graeme Bachop who remembers Merrick as quick, rugged and tough. On the line from Christchurch in New Zealand, Bachop savours a kindred spirit: “After those Test matches I got to know Steve well.”

Birds of a feather, Bachop also refused the offer to play professionally for the All Blacks. “We’re similar in some respects,” he explains, “both quiet sort of guys and we wanted to play for fun and the honour of the jersey, not turn it into a job.

After the game they swapped shorts and later became friends, meeting at tournaments around the world. Merrick remembers “the best night of my life!” walking out of a pub in Hong Kong with the sun coming up, laughing with Bachop and former Wallabies halfback Nick Farr-Jones.

The Wallabies had played well in a losing cause and Merrick retained his spot for the second 1995 Test a week later against the All Blacks at the Sydney Football Stadium. If there was any doubt in the first Test, there was none in Sydney as the Wallabies lost 34-23. “Lomu flogged us,” Merrick remembers painfully.

Merrick’s second Test was another blur, but this time for different reasons. All Blacks Zinzan Brooke and Frank Bunce crunched his shoulder badly in a tackle and after attending the post match function on pain killers, he jumped in his car and drove back to Singleton. The patrons at the packed Percy Hotel could hardly believe their Wallabies star was drinking with them having just watched him on television. “I just wanted to do my job and not look like an idiot,” says Merrick.

Merrick tackles New Zealand’s Walter Little at Eden Park on 22 July, 1995. Photograph: David Rogers/Getty Images

The new Wallabies scrumhalf returned to driving trucks at the coalmine, positioned for a long playing career. Meanwhile, a civil war raged between the World Rugby Corporation, who had staged a coup by signing 500 of the best players to start an elite global competition, and the freshly-formed Sanzar unions, who with the backing of Rupert Murdoch lured players back to the establishment with juicy financial contracts.

Offer and counter offer drove up players’ values while Sydney’s rugby community was a nest of intrigue; emotions were running high and lifelong friendships were severed.

The Australian Rugby Union invited Merrick and his wife down to Sydney to offer him a contract – as an incumbent Wallaby, his signature was prized. A big offer was tabled, but there were conditions: Merrick had to live in Sydney, play with the NSW Waratahs and leave bush rugby.

The important decisions often make themselves and Merrick recalls looking at his wife and sharing “a moment”. Rebecca replied: “I’d rather be poor and happy.”

In a move that caught everyone off guard, the 26-year-old Merrick said no to both sides, shunned the new era of professionalism and returned to Singleton to play footy with his mates and start a family.

George Gregan replaced him in the Wallabies XV and went on to become Australia’s most capped Test player, retiring in 2007 with a record 139. Merrick retired from the Singleton Bulls in 2007 having played his 300th game over a 20-year career.

“I want to live in a place where you can play cricket on the street and get 20 overs in before the first car comes.” Merrick told the Sydney Morning Herald soon after.

The decision was clear and definitive. “I’ve done everything I’ve ever dreamed of in the last four weeks,” he said. “I wouldn’t be disappointed if I broke my leg and couldn’t play again. I’m off. Hooroo!”

It is the sweetest irony that after 100 years of amateurism, a working class coalminer with a rugby league background was the last man standing upholding rugby union’s amateur tradition.

Over a freshly poured beer, Merrick chuckles at his brazen younger self: “I still hate Sydney,” he says. “I couldn’t live there now. People aren’t friendly, they’re angry on the roads. I need space.”

Crises precipitate change and Sanzar prevailed over the rebel World Rugby Corporation, player salaries crystallised and the amateur era was officially over.

Many fans argue that the quality of the game has increased but it is undeniable that modern day rugby is now less fun. Curfews, skin fold tests, alcohol bans, nutritionists, recovery, regeneration, rehydration and sponsor servicing have turned elite rugby into a job and eroded some of its core values.

The social side of the game has suffered with less interaction between players who are now managed as ‘assets’. The change was felt by elite players across the world, including former South African front rower Keith Andrews, who said: “Players don’t get to know their opponents now after the game – they’re not mates, its straight on the bus.”

Merrick is not beguiled by nostalgia and has no regrets. “The game needed to go that way and it didn’t suit me,” he explains. “I was brought up to play for enjoyment and I’m equal with my team-mates. It’s never been a job for me.”

Merrick is now out of the coal truck and promoted to working in the mine as a technical supervisor – a “job for life.” His daughter is at university studying to be a primary school teacher and he enjoys coaching his son. He rarely gets invited to Wallabies functions, but he’s happy in Singleton among his mates and family. In his spare time he is a long distance dirt biker, sometimes riding 1,000 kilometre days and never happier than “out on the bike”.



Merrick is cautiously optimistic for the future: “It’s hard to get kids off their phones and down to training but the fundamentals still apply. If you work hard there’s nothing you can’t fix in a couple of months.”

The painting ‘Steve Merrick - The Spirit of country rugby’ hangs on the wall at Singleton Bulls clubhouse. Photograph: Photograph: www.rjbosler.com

The Singleton Bulls score another try and raucous celebrations break out on the balcony although Hamilton eventually win 49-12. The socialising and drinking continues in the upstairs clubhouse and pride of place on the wall is an enormous painting of Merrick donated by media king John Singleton.



“The rugby spirit lives,” says Merrick, watching on as the two teams mix, sing and share stories: “Two teams with players from different backgrounds playing and drinking together for the love of it.”

His legacy, says Bachop, is clear: “He could easily have gone on to be a great player but said ‘see you later’. We played on a handshake and Steve has my full respect and the respect of the rugby community.”

Rugby’s beloved Scottish commentator Bill McLaren once said: “I loved rugby when it was an escape from the daily grind, now it is the daily grind.” McLaren would have been at home here at the Singleton Bulls, a beer in one hand and listening to the story of Steve Merrick, the coalminer plucked from the bush to become a Wallaby, and when asked to name his price, didn’t have one.