The Indomitables

Great Britain's 1946 tour down under

Great Britain 1946 shirt

The sun searing in the skies above Port Said blisters the giant HMS Indomitable’s hard armour-plated deck.

Built to house an armada of fighter planes, it now reverberates to the drumming of feet, as shouting, puffing and panting fills the air.

Twenty-six young men, gently baking and bronzing in the heat and glare, have their eyes on one prize; the leather rugby football which is being tossed between them.

Suddenly, there is a splash.

The ball has been errantly whizzed over the side of the ship, tumbling into the waters below.

Without hesitation, one of the players leaps from the towering carrier, falling a dizzying height into the sea. Eventually, he scampers up the side, sodden but clutching his cargo.

For rugby league centre Eric Batten, there is a severe telling off from the ship’s captain...

“There are sharks in that water.”

But he knows those balls are precious.

It is 1946, and Great Britain’s elite rugby league team - 26 of the best players the British Isles can muster - is heading for Australia and New Zealand.

Little more than six months since World War Two ended, the men are trading the ration-book austerity of post-war Britain for new horizons down under.

Their transport is a 23,000-tonne aircraft carrier, the Indomitable, ferrying them 10,000 miles over four weeks, stopping at far-off lands, for a six-month tour.

It is the journey of a lifetime, the story of camaraderie, friendship, hardship, scandal and a history-making team that became immortalised forever as "The Indomitables".

Great Britain players throw a rugby ball on deck

The sun searing in the skies above Port Said blisters the giant HMS Indomitable’s hard armour-plated deck.

Built to house an armada of fighter planes, it now reverberates to the drumming of feet, as shouting, puffing and panting fills the air.

Great Britain players throwing a rugby ball on HMS Indomitable

Twenty-six young men, gently baking and bronzing in the heat and glare, have their eyes on one prize; the leather rugby football which is being tossed between them.

Suddenly, there is a splash.

The ball has been errantly whizzed over the side of the ship, tumbling into the waters below.

Without hesitation, one of the players leaps from the towering carrier, falling a dizzying height into the sea. Eventually, he scampers up the side, sodden but clutching his cargo.

For rugby league centre Eric Batten, there is a severe telling off from the ship’s captain...

“There are sharks in that water.”

But he knows those balls are precious.

It is 1946, and Great Britain’s elite rugby league team - 26 of the best players the British Isles can muster - is heading for Australia and New Zealand.

Little more than six months since World War Two ended, the men are trading the ration-book austerity of post-war Britain for new horizons down under.

Their transport is a 23,000-tonne aircraft carrier, the Indomitable, ferrying them 10,000 miles over four weeks, stopping at far-off lands, for a six-month tour.

It is the journey of a lifetime, the story of camaraderie, friendship, hardship, scandal and a history-making team that became immortalised forever as "The Indomitables".

Great Britain players on HMS Indomitable

Sport was one of the few distractions from the drudgery of life after World War Two, as fans flocked to football, rugby league and rugby union fixtures in growing numbers.

Rugby league in England is, and very much was, a sport rooted in the industrial north. Its beginnings intrinsically linked to dockers, pitmen and millers who sought recompense for injuries sustained while playing that forced them to miss work.

However, in Australia, rugby league was egalitarian, played and loved by all across society, from government ministers to labourers. Sydney and Brisbane were particular hotbeds for the sport.

League had run throughout the conflict in both hemispheres as a way of boosting morale, and to raise funds and publicity for the war effort.

Meeting with Dr Evatt recorded in Rugby Football League's minutes

However, the old Ashes tussles with Australia - the name of the series between the nations having been borrowed from cricket - had been put on ice.

Now, communication from the Australian government was being made to bring the famous rugby league powers back together.

Dr Hubert Vere Evatt was the Minister for External Affairs in the Australian government, and it was his letter, sent in late 1945, which set the wheels in motion for a tour of Australia by a Great British side.

The former High Court judge had been appointed attorney general and foreign minister during World War Two, and saw great value in sporting links.

Dr Evatt and his two secretaries were welcomed to lunch at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, and then presented to the Rugby League Council.

“The close relationships built between Australia and New Zealand and the north of England is in the nature of a history,” the Rugby Football League’s minutes report Dr Evatt stating. “And the building up of the history ought to be resumed as soon as possible, in the best interests of rugby league football and of the Empire.”

Rugby Football League meeting agenda

Tony Collins, a rugby league historian, author, and emeritus professor of history at De Montfort University, said the use of rugby league in sporting diplomacy was “itself a historic moment” for the game.

“As far as I’m aware, it’s the first time that a minister from any government has addressed the RFL and I don’t think any British government minister ever did,” he told BBC Sport.

“It was an incredibly important tour for the sport. It had a huge political importance. The Australian government saw it as one of the most important things they could do after the war to repair bonds between Australia and Great Britain.

“Australia had been isolated, and there had been a widespread feeling in Australia that Britain had abandoned them.”

Evatt’s impassioned speech drew on the significance of getting a British rugby league side out to Australia.

The Rugby League Council voted 19-4 in favour of a tour. Now plans could be made to get the team on its way.

For all the support from on high, the RFL’s ambitions of sending a side to the southern hemisphere was in danger of being cancelled because of a lack of commercial or merchant shipping to get them there.

The Australians had a plan, and the political muscle to smooth their passage.

HMS Indomitable

The Royal Navy’s HMS Indomitable had survived running aground, being torpedoed by the Germans and even a kamikaze raid by Japanese fighters during its military service, which took in tours of the Far East, the Mediterranean and the Pacific.

Now it would be the home from home for Great Britain's rugby league players on its first tour after the war.

Model of HMS Indomitable

A scale model of HMS Indomitable can be found at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton, Somerset

A scale model of HMS Indomitable can be found at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton, Somerset

“I doubt the RFL would have had the contacts on which to arrange it,” Prof Collins said. “One of the problems they had when they were initially offered the chance to tour by the Australian Rugby League Board of Control was that they didn’t know how to organise it.

“Rugby league would have been low down on the priorities for the authorities.

“The Australians pulled strings to get them on board the aircraft carrier. Otherwise there is no conceivable way. It’s part of the emphasis Australia placed on getting the tour on.”

Model of HMS Indomitable

The prospect raised great excitement. Few in rugby league’s northern hotspots had been able to travel, even during their military service.

Ahead of them lay 10,000 miles of sea and ocean, taking in five stops and a travel time of four weeks.

Players, management, journalists, returning servicemen and a host of other civilian travellers made up the motley crew.

Rugby Football League minutes of 1946 squad selection

It was a brave man that took the step of leaving rugby union to play rugby league during the 15-man code’s amateur years. You were instantly banned from returning again.

Unless, of course, it was wartime.

The rugby union authorities saw an opportunity in the number of league-playing servicemen, and plundered their services freely.

For some, like tour captain Gus Risman, it fulfilled a boyhood dream of playing for Wales at Cardiff Arms Park.

He was one of 11 code-switching Welshmen named in the squad, which despite travelling under the auspices of England and carrying the historic nickname "the Rugby League Lions", was very much a Great Britain side in all but name.

Others, such as Ernest Ward, were almost denied their place on the grand voyage.

Ernest Ward holds the Challenge Cup

The Bradford Northern centre was an Army corporal who regularly turned out for the services’ union side – much to his club’s frustrations as he was denied release to play for them in favour of representative rugby union games.

Three players - Ward, Oldham’s Bob Phillips and York’s Les White – were all set to miss out on the tour as acting servicemen stationed at Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire.

RFL secretary John Wilson personally contacted the Secretary of State for War, Mr J J Lawson, in a bid to smooth out access, with a deadline of 26 March, 1946 set for the clearance.

It was a panicky few days for the committee and the players, before the Army finally confirmed their release.

Skipper Risman, 35, was a veteran of previous tours, while vice-captain Tommy McCue had also been involved before.

But powerful prop Frank Whitcombe, even at 32, was a Lions debutant.

Frank Whitcombe

The Welsh union convert, while working as a bowser driver for the Royal Air Force and delivering explosives to munitions factories during the war, had played wartime internationals for Wales.

Now he would wear the red and blue chevron of the Lions.

“He would have been selected on the 1940 tour which was going to go to Australia,” grandson Martin Whitcombe, who has written books on his grandfather and The Indomitables, said. “He would have been on a 1944 tour and obviously did go in 1946.

“A whole generation missed out. In the Australian team, every player was a new cap.”

One of the three journalists granted permission to travel with the team was Eddie Waring. Waring had made his name not only as a scribe and would-be broadcaster, but also as team manager of Dewsbury and Leeds. He paid his own fare to be involved.

He wrote a diary of the tour which not only remains one of the key texts in the history of the Lions brand, but also helped launch his media career on the return to Britain.

Gus Risman holding the Challenge Cup
Frank Whitcombe set for departure to Australia

The atmosphere buzzed at Plymouth’s famous Devonport on Wednesday, 3 April 1946, as the Indomitable loaded on its cargo and crew bound for the Antipodes.

Camera bulbs popped and flashed while journalists jostled on the deck to mark the departure, while the crew were waved off by hardy souls on the dockside. Once the deck was cleared, the anchor was raised and the carrier churned its way out into the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

The constant chug of the steam turbine engines was something the party would become accustomed to. This was not an ocean liner built for comfort, it was a piece of military hardware.

Great Britain squad on HMS Indomitable

Trevor Foster, Bradford’s big Welsh back-rower, was charged with making the team fit and had a flight deck the length of two football pitches to work with.

Batten’s plunge into the water to retrieve the ball from those shark-infested waters was a desperate one given the scarcity of kit. There were just a couple of balls on board, and they were essential equipment.

At 32, Batten was another of the game’s all-time greats who finally got his opportunity to grace the Lions stage, just as his father Billy - a hall of fame entrant in 1988 - had done in 1910.

Below deck, there was a petty officer’s mess which the players were granted access to, while bedding down was something of a lottery.

“As you can imagine, sleeping accommodation was a wee bit tight, but I – probably because I was skipper of the party – was allocated a bunk in the chart room, which was amidships,” captain Risman remembered in his book Rugby Renegade.

“Others were not quite so lucky. Their bunks were near the engine room, and they spent each night simply bathed in perspiration. One of the unlucky ones was our big forward Frank Whitcombe, and we lost no opportunity of telling Frank that his nightly Turkish bath helped keep his weight in check.”

Example of bunks on HMS Indomitable

An example of the type of bunks slept on by the Great Britain players on HMS Indomitable

An example of the type of bunks slept on by the Great Britain players on HMS Indomitable

Whitcombe, at 17 stones, was the squad’s enforcer - the resident hard man. But there was a lighter side.

“Frank was the great comic of the party,” Risman wrote. “He kept us all on the very best of humour even in the difficult times, and there are always difficult times on any tour – and he was a magnificent team man, the sort of man on and off the field that is indispensable to any touring party.”

Stops whirred by in a flurry of exotic foods; fresh fruit was brought back to the ship by Waring in Gibraltar to the amazement of the crew.

In Malta, it was chocolate and other confectionery which the players gorged on greedily, as well as hot, hearty meals in Valletta’s restaurants.

Back home, such items were a flight of fantasy, with rationing of everything from basic items such as bread and butter, to choice cuts of meat.

Sailors, as an important tool within the war effort, received greater provisions and the regular meals served on board provided the players too with essential nutrition for the physical challenges ahead.

The players joined in with naval traditions, and not just by way of taking advantage of the cheap cigarettes and rum quotas. They were introduced to the rough and tumble of deck hockey, but were outshone in the navy’s favoured sport by the most unlikely of sources.

“One of the best ‘outside’ teams was the ‘Sky Pilots’ – these were the priests from Eire,” Waring recalled in his tour diary. ”And they were rough too. The semi-final between the Stokers and Sky Pilots was tougher than any rugby league match I’ve seen.”

Having set sail in mid-spring, the tourists found the temperatures soaring far beyond the UK average by the time they made their passage down the Suez Canal.

Heat and the sun were tough to avoid, particularly on the open deck, and few of the players, not accustomed to such a long and arduous journey, had considered the impact of the climate.

Great Britain players with Indomitable crew

“Most of the party were unprepared for the extreme hot weather,” Waring noted. “Fortunately, this omission of clothing was rectified by purchases from the well-equipped navy store.

“No doubt, many articles of clothing were bought which, in many cases, will never be used again. However, it saved us from complete annihilation by the sun.”

Rationing went beyond what could be put on tables and in stomachs. It drilled down into everyday clothing and shoes, with sports equipment well down the list of priorities.

Each player received a huge leather trunk in which their travelling items were transported.

“It’s a great example of the everyday deprivation that ordinary people were feeling after the war,” Prof Collins continued. “Even Gus Risman, one of the most famous rugby league players of his day, a man with a high media profile, captained the Welsh wartime rugby union team, couldn’t fill a trunk.”

Risman told the Daily Despatch newspaper in the build-up to the tour: “I have found it difficult to obtain sufficient clothing for the trip. I shall travel in my demob suit [a suit every soldier was issued on their discharge from the army]. My football boots have been patched so often that there are now more patches than the original leather on the uppers.”

As the carrier cut its way through the Suez Canal and back into open waters, stops such as Aden, in Yemen, and the now Sri Lankan port of Colombo provided respite from the seas.

They would disembark the mighty vessel to have their eyes widened, hunger sated and, sometimes, their minds blown.

The Crown Prince of Yemen boarded the ship with an array of armed guards, and left a cargo of fruits, nuts and other provisions for his trouble.

Great Britain players ashore in Aden

Players bathed in the saltwaters, although Harry Murphy injured his back in the seas around Aden. But Colombo was much more palatable.

“The shops with their unmarked gold rings, ebony elephants and jewellery proved the most popular attractions. Drinking in the famous Palace Hotel, a group of British sailors came over to talk to some of the boys,” Waring continued.

“Nearby they saw a sun-tanned ‘local’ with a fez on his head. After watching the local take a great deal of interest in their conversation they eventually turned on him and told him to mind his own business. To their utter amazement the ‘local’ said: “It’s alreight lad, I come fra’ Bradford!” It was Eric Batten, the winger.”

Once beyond Colombo, it was full speed ahead for Fremantle. Australia lay in wait.

“We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil,” the Australian national anthem reads. “Our home is girt by sea.”

Didn’t the travellers of the Indomitable know it by the time the hulking shape of the carrier drew its way into the waters of Fremantle – after nine days without sight of land.

Hitting Australia’s west coast did not leave too much by way of celebration, as it would take a further six days to skirt the Bight around to Sydney, and rugby league’s true Australian heartlands.

Fremantle, just outside Perth, was not a rugby league town but rather an Australian Rules hotbed. The region has remained a stronghold even today in the national AFL league with the Fremantle Dockers and West Coast Eagles.

Initially, the stay was expected to be a short one, with the continuation of the journey beginning in earnest. However, another carrier being used for passenger transit, Victorious, had run into problems around the Bight and suffered damage. Its passengers were transferred to Indomitable and sent back to Britain.

What were the tourists to do? It took seven days to find alternative transport.

After the team were put up in a transit camp, with exploring Fremantle and nearby Perth to pass the time, it was confirmed that the navy had acquired them use of a troop train. 

This was no Orient Express-style journey of opulence.

“We stood, sat and slept in the same garments, although to say we slept is a spot of exaggeration,” Risman said. “There were of course no sleeping berths so we had to rest where or how we could; on the floor, on the seat, in the luggage rack or even the corridor.”

Thousands of miles passed under the clanking tracks, and different gauges of line across the vast expanse of the Australian bush ensured progress was slow.

Catering was another concern. Very quickly the hearty meals and ashore treats of their journey on Indomitable became a distant memory.

“No food was provided on the train, but at meal times the train would stop at various points en route and we would dive out of the carriages armed with the good old service ‘irons’ (knife, fork, spoon and plate) and line up at the cafeteria where stew would be poured onto our plates,” Risman recalled. “We just sat on the ground and ate – and fought like mad to keep off the millions of flies.”

Great Britain players on train

Frank Whitcombe’s grandson Martin added: “At the time there was a terrible fuel shortage, so the engines were run under wartime restrictions and travelled at around 12 miles per hour.

“There were no beds. It was a military train. They were inspected in the morning so they had to get up, sweep the train out and be inspected.

“This was the part of the journey which really tested the resolve. But the management showed great leadership. They told the navy: ‘We cannot have these players scrubbing the floor’. So the management scrubbed the floor, while the players swept it.”

Risman continued: “It was a luxury to be able to move, let alone do any physical exercise. Sometimes the train would slow down and when it did some of us would jump down and trot alongside it.

“Once the train picked up speed without any warning and Frank Whitcombe just managed to grab the last rail of the last coach. If he had failed, one of our star forwards would have been left all on his lonesome in the Australian desert.”

Eventually the unrelenting hardness of the desert passed and the train made its rickety clack along the rails through more populated terrain.

Adelaide passed in a blur of civilisation, the last stopping point on the long slog to Melbourne.

Compared to the 2,100 miles that faced them back to Fremantle, the final 545 from Victoria’s capital through to Sydney would surely be plain sailing?

Players with heads out of train window
Players waiting with luggage

“By the time we arrived in Melbourne we must have been the most unfit rugby league side to ever arrive in that famous city,” Risman remarked, as the days of throwing a ball about in the Mediterranean sun on the Indomitable’s spacious deck seemed a long, long time ago.

Their slow progress saw them miss the opportunity to speed through to Sydney on the ‘Spirit of Progress’, a fast new passenger train heralded as the future of rail travel.

Instead, it was another ‘make do’ experience.

“A compartment had been reserved for us, which pleased us all,” Risman said.

“Until we discovered that the reservation was for 13 players only. There were 26 of us and a couple of managers.

“There was nothing for it but to pile into the cramped space, 28 people in the space reserved for 13 and when we arrived in Sydney we were still wearing the same clothes we had worn when we had left Fremantle.

“We had been transformed from the fittest to the unfittest and then the most disreputable looking side, all in the space of the week.”

To cap things off, when they arrived in Sydney there was no connecting transport laid on for the team, who had to make their own way to their final destination - the Olympic Hotel.

“People in those days didn’t travel around the world, unless they were in the navy or the army,” Prof Collins said.

“They went on a big adventure that they didn’t know how it would turn out. They were stepping out into the dark."

Players sleeping rough on train

Playing shirts were acquired once in Sydney, from the Mick Simmons Sports shop. The availability of such goods made the scrabble for items in England seem almost surreal.

The RFL accounts for the tour show that £274 15s 4d was spent on equipment, which today equates to almost £10,000 of kit and outfits, including team blazers.

Their arrival in Sydney also brought a largely novice side into contact with the ruthless Australian media, looking for scoops and scandal.

Great Britain players line-up

In England, there was match coverage and analysis but with a far more regional scope; rugby league in Australia was high on the news agenda.

Some journalists had written that the arduous trip brought the team to loggerheads. It did not go down well with the tourists.

“No one is going to claim that we loved our trip from Fremantle to Sydney - who would have done?” Risman added. “The 1946 party was composed of a grand bunch of lads who realised that the tour was being made under extreme difficulties and that everyone was doing his or her best.

“So there were no grumbles, and no group of sportsmen has ever been further away from rebellion. Open or covert.”

Criticism was also made of the tourists’ physical conditioning. The Sydney Morning Herald, in particular, did not hold back.

Great Britain players at welcoming lunch

“Some of the players are much too fat - the result of all the good food they have had in Australia,” their editorial on the team’s arrival lunch said.

“A portion of the team's heavy baggage has gone astray, and some of the Englishmen last night wore borrowed clothing.”

Despite those early issues, the team had arrived. Now it was time to show exactly why they had made the journey in the first place.

Australia’s wish to see international rugby league back on the agenda was about to come to fruition.

From country towns through to the metropolises of Sydney and Brisbane, everywhere the Britons went, they were greeted lovingly by their hosts.

Great Britain players meet Australian dignitaries

“Aside from cricket, the most important sporting connection between Australia and Britain was rugby league,” Prof Collins said.

“The way to understand it then is to see State of Origin as it is today - the hugely popular games between New South Wales and Queensland. There was the same build-up and intensity between Great Britain and Australia.”

The news that the travelling ‘Poms’ were here brought the villages which were to proudly host tour matches to life.

“The population of Junee was 5,500, but the attendance for the game there was 8,000,” Martin Whitcombe said. “People travelled hundreds of miles just to watch a game.

“Just as people in England had been starved of international rugby league, so the Australians had. The players were idolised there, like film stars.”

It was also where for the first time of many, the players were reminded of the situation back home, and the sympathy of the public for the hardships was expressed by the distribution of food parcels.

“People at that time would refer to Britain as the mother country in Australia,” Whitcombe added. “Everyone would have an auntie, uncle, niece, brother and so on, so there was the historical tie-up with the country and also during the war we’d all fought together.

“There was a real kind of togetherness spirit. The kindness expressed by the Australians who knew the rationing issue back home, irrespective of the rivalry on the field, the way they were treated off the field must have been a dream.”

Great Britain players meet Australia's prime minister

In Canberra, the players met the Prime Minister, Mr Joseph Benedict Chifley, and were heartened to find his interest and knowledge of the sport.

A Welsh choir, set up by Waring, took on a few radio performances across the bustling Sydney rugby league broadcast media, which helped swell the tourists’ funds and publicise their visit.

Welsh choir

The first real test of their appeal would come at one of the great cathedrals of world sport - the Sydney Cricket Ground.

It was not even a Test match, but the game against a New South Wales representative side whet the appetite of the Sydney public.

The crowd of 51,364 watched a hard, physical 14-10 win for the Lions, and, following a midweek defeat in the Wollongong dust by a South Coast Division team, a second victory over the Blues drew 47,085 fans.

British Pathe footage of a try scored in the victory over New South Wales (this clip does not contain sound)

British Pathe footage of a try scored in the victory over New South Wales (this clip does not contain sound)

Now it was time for Risman’s side to get down to the real business of Australia, known as the Kangaroos, in the first Test.

Great Britain players walk onto the pitch
First Test scoreline graphic

“Test football in Sydney is unlike any in any other part of the world,” Waring gushed in his tour diary. “It has an atmosphere that is electric.”

For the British players, it was sensory overload. Before the buzzing crowd, they could never imagine being allowed to stomp around at Lord’s, Trent Bridge or the ‘other’ side of Headingley. It just ‘wasn’t cricket’ back home. In Sydney, it was no issue.

Great Britain v Australia

The controversial 8-8 draw was ill-tempered, so much so that Frank Whitcombe knocked out Australia prop Frank ‘Bumper’ Farrell, who subsequently lashed out at an unsuspecting St John’s Ambulance attendee armed only with smelling salts.

It was, bizarrely, the beginning of a great friendship.

“They went drinking at the Dolphin Hotel in Surry Hills after,” Whitcombe’s grandson, Martin said. “After they returned to Sydney for the third Test, they went on an all-night session. Despite the ferocious rivalry, there was tremendous mutual respect.

“The last time, Farrell took all the Australian pack, Whitcombe took the Great Britain pack, and the big forwards had such a night that they ended up having breakfast together too.”

The bruises of the first brutal Test against the Kangaroos had barely subsided when they travelled north to be beaten by Queensland in Brisbane, and then joined a goods train to take them into the heart of North Queensland.

Among the livestock, gallons of beer and other provisions brought along the rails, was an elite bunch of Great Britain rugby league players.

Great Britain walk onto the field

Despite a crippling coal strike, Queenslanders replicated their New South Wales neighbours’ warmth with a flurry of civic invitations and food parcels to send back home.

In Rockhampton the team checked into, and then swiftly checked out of a hotel, after Whitcombe fell through a rickety bed and an infestation of bugs was discovered.

The searing hot Townsville was reached by rail in great discomfort, echoing the earlier journey across the bush. Meanwhile, exhibition games continued to rack up wins, points and most importantly funds for the tour coffers.

“Townsville will go down in the records as the place from where the first British team flew.” Waring noted in his tour diary. “After all the travel worries, air service came into reckoning and the whole party flew in various drafts down to Mackay or, in the case of one or two Test players, straight to Brisbane.”

Fresh from their first taste of air travel, Mackay saw the Lions rack up a record score in a 94-0 thrashing of the district representative team.

Four days later, in Brisbane, the Kangaroos were waiting.

Second Test scoreline graphic

Brisbane Exhibition Ground was full to the brim, packed to the rafters and then some.

The official capacity was 55,000 for the second Test between Australia and the Lions. But with fans camped along the sidelines and police keeping them off the field, the attendance was likely much higher.

Having beaten Australia 2-1 when the nations had last played a series in England in 1937, Risman’s side could retain the Ashes with victory. The stakes were high.

The captains of Great Britain and Australia shake hands

“By convincingly defeating Australia 14-5 before a crowd estimated at 65,000 at the Exhibition Ground today, England retained the Rugby League Ashes,” screamed the opening paragraph of the Telegraph in Brisbane the morning after the second Test.

Risman’s side had done it. Amidst all of the adversity, the travel, the arduous schedule and the physical nature of the touring games, they had secured the series.

It had been three months since the players had left Plymouth on the Indomitable. They had achieved what they set out to do, and could now go on to make history if they could avoid a third-Test defeat.

The final tour matches before that Test were undertaken on the trickle back south towards Sydney.

The Lions were victorious in Ipswich, Toowoomba and Grafton, and finally, after 19 games, 15 wins, a draw and three defeats, there was one match of the Australian leg to go.

Back to the Sydney Cricket Ground they went.

Third Test scoreline graphic

If Australia had been a wonderful, happy experience for the Great Britain team so far, and the Test matches hard-fought but successful, then what occurred before the third Test could have blown apart the whole tour.

Great Britain v Australia

Lions skipper Risman, with his sharp looks, gentlemanly manner on and off the field and intelligent, skilful play, could almost have been rugby league’s own ‘Brylcreem Boy’.

Yet, before that third and final history-making Test, he was put at the centre of what, today, would be a major scandal.

“I was actually offered £500 by a character to make sure that Great Britain did not win the final Test at Sydney,” Risman wrote.

“Needless to say, the offer was turned down flat, and I used the incident in a dressing room pep-talk before the game.

“The boys went out raring to go.

"Bribery to make the British team lose a rugby match? A thing unheard of, and I know every British player that day would sooner have died than lose.

“The score was decisive, Great Britain 20-7 Australia. I got three goals.”

British Pathe footage of the Lions' win over Australia in the third Test (this clip does not contain sound)

British Pathe footage of the Lions' win over Australia in the third Test (this clip does not contain sound)

No touring side had ever achieved the feat of going undefeated in Test matches during a series, but Risman’s side did, finishing up winners and clinching the Courtney Trophy.

It was a tired, in places homesick bunch of touring footballers that plotted the next stage of the mammoth Lions voyage, ‘crossing the ditch’ as the Aussies put it to tour New Zealand.

There was a feeling that the Kiwis merited the trip, as their tour of Great Britain in 1939 had been cut short by the war.

Winning the Ashes had been the main objective, so New Zealand was a chance for the players to relax.

Goodwill, and a bit of a ‘beg, borrow or steal’ spirit had been key to much of the tour organisation, and so it proved in transporting the team across the Tasman.

Plane ticket from Auckland to Sydney

“They used the float planes for Trans-Tasman Airlines, it was the mail run from Australia to New Zealand,” Martin Whitcombe said.

“Because they were Sunderland flying boats, you could only get nine players on at a time. The New Zealand leg was planned on the hoof.”

Risman said: “We may have been forgiven for regarding the NZ trip as a holiday following the rigours of the Australian tour. The waters and baths of Rotorua were sampled in a three-day stay there.”

Almost every conceivable mode of transport was taken while in New Zealand, from a boat on rough seas from Wellington to Lyttleton, near Christchurch, which tested even the toughest of stomachs, to the hours and miles racked up by rail heading to Auckland.

While the welcome extended continued in a wave of cultural greetings, gifts lavished and food parcels passed on, the conditions in the ‘land of the long white cloud’ were very different.

Gluey, sticky surfaces resembled Batley’s Mount Pleasant or Huddersfield’s Fartown in mid-December, rather than the dry, dusty tracks they had become accustomed to in Australia.

The tourists again played a series of exhibition games, but the one Test against the Kiwis ended in a 13-8 defeat.

Newspaper report of New Zealand's win over Great Britain

“We were left with a profound respect for Kiwi rugby league,” Risman recalled.

By the end of the New Zealand leg of their tour, Great Britain had played 27 games, won 21 and lost five.

Now it was time to head home on the RMS Rangitiki.

Before boarding, the players were handed a disclaimer warning ‘conditions on board will be austere’, but given their previous experiences, there was no grumbling.

The boat, also carrying Australian war brides headed to meet their American GI husbands, piloted its way the opposite route around the world, through the Pacific and the Panama Canal.

A dockers strike put paid to talk of a game in New York and also left the war brides pondering how to get home when the boat eventually docked at Halifax, Nova Scotia - some 630 miles north east of the ‘Big Apple’.

Eventually, after some six months of ships, trains, planes and automobiles, of bruising Test matches, of wonderful hospitality and at times unrelenting hardship since leaving Devonport, the team sailed back into Britain.

Winners, immortalised forever as The Indomitables.

Great Britain 1946 caps

The resumption of the Ashes clashes had reawoken international rugby league and done its bit for intra-Empire relations.

Within a year, New Zealand returned to Britain for a Test series and within eight years, the French rugby league – still rebuilding after the wartime Vichy government banned them from existence – had established the first World Cup, which was won in 1954 by a Great Britain team captained by Scottish back-rower Dave Valentine.

Great Britain's 1954 World Cup winners

However, by the 1970s the balance of power started to swing as the Australians began to catch up and overhaul.

Never again would Great Britain be so dominant on the world stage.


In many respects, the Indomitables tour was of its time, a moment in history that will never be repeated.

“The tour in 1946 was the moment where the past and the present came together and it was never the same again, because of the changing nature of Australia’s relationship with Britain,” Prof Collins said.

“It was heightened by the war, which made feelings about loyalty to Britain and the mother country much stronger.

“By the time we got to the 1950s, it starts to change.

"The British Empire is being dismantled, there is Britain’s joining of the Common Market and then the 1963 Commonwealth Immigration Act is brought in, and Australians have to have passports to come to Britain. By the 1960s, Australia is very much less deferential to Britain.”

Kallum Watkins playing for England in 2017

The last time Great Britain won the World Cup was in 1972, and England’s 2017 final loss to the Kangaroos was the closest they have come since.

It is even more astounding that the Indomitables remain the last team to go unbeaten during a Test series in Australia.

Their achievements remain a benchmark for the teams of today and the future, following this year’s return of the Great Britain brand for the first time in 12 years.

Great Britain squad of 1946

Producer: Phil Cartwright

Author: Matt Newsum

Sub-editor: Steve Marshall

Images: Dai Jenkins collection, Frank Whitcombe collection, Getty Images, Matt Newsum, Rex Features, Rugby League Cares, SWPIX

Video: British Pathe

Special thanks to: Fleet Air Arm Museum, Rugby League Cares, Andrew Aloia

Excerpts of Gus Risman and Eddie Waring books used with kind permission of Scratching Shed Publishing

Publication date: 7 November 2019