It says much about the meaning of Queensland vs NSW matches that a single result in 1976 should stir an epic 50-Year Reunion lunch this week.
Reds coach Les Kiss and his 2026 team got an inkling this week when 1976 team members David Dunworth and Greg Shambrook were invited into the team huddle after Wednesday’s training session.
On the same Ballymore turf in 1976, a watershed moment in Queensland rugby unfolded…a thumping 42-4 victory over the old foe from NSW.
Kiss has a keen feel for the meaning of such moments.
He told his players: “It’s important we honour and connect with our Queensland history…and go out to create some history of our own.”
That chance arrives on Saturday night at Suncorp Stadium in the latest edition of Reds vs Waratahs, a rugby rivalry across more than 140 years.
Those years have been filled with interstate drama, heroics, unforgettable tries, sledges and bloodied confrontations at close range.
Decades of playing second fiddle to NSW was summed up by just five Queensland wins from 20 interstate games before that landmark turnaround in 1976.
It is the very fact that the events of May 29, 1976 meant far more than the 80 minutes on the field which brought a fabled group together again on Wednesday.
The Queenslanders didn’t drop a game to NSW for the rest of the 1970s. The era of the mighty Maroons was born that day.
“It certainly was a momentous occasion for Queensland rugby, a coming of age,” said Mark Loane, captain and No.8 in the 1976 side.
“In those days, rugby stood alone in a lot of ways (as a Queensland team). Rugby league didn’t have State of Origin and Aussie Rules didn’t have a national structure.
“The winning of that day was the start of greater recognition that if you played rugby for Queensland, you could play for Australia.
“For the prior 50 years it wasn’t the case. From that day, we had good numbers of Queenslanders in Wallabies sides for years. To this day, 50 years later, you see it.”
Mention the names of rugby greats Loane, Paul McLean, Tony Shaw and Andrew Slack and the acknowledgements are still rich today.
They all featured in that 1976 victory alongside the likes of bullocking two-try winger Paddy Batch, fullback Graham Noon, high-leaping David Hillhouse, lock partner Peter “Spider” McLean, the late Stan Pilecki and a fresh-faced 19-year-old hooker named Bill Ross.
Most who could gathered at The Jubilee Hotel on Wednesday to enjoy the firm friendships and memories forged in that era.
NSW actually scored the first try in the 1976 game and NSW captain Geoff Shaw was heard to say it’s “going to be one of those days.
It was a game like no other from that point.
The Queenslanders rattled on six tries and 42 unanswered points. It was the way they scored them too. Late in the game, Loane twice instructed flyhalf McLean to put up "Garryowens".
Famed rugby writer Frank O’Callaghan explained what happened next in The Courier-Mail.
“It was sheer terror tactics. Eight pounding forwards sent away by a roaring mob and seemingly hell bent on destruction,” he wrote.
“Slender NSW winger Dave McKinley had the temerity to catch the ball. He was hurled aside in the maelstrom.
“…Batch barrelled through the remnants of the defence to score.
“McLean put the ball up again. By now the Blues were in total disarray and, from the shambles of bodies, Ross scored.”
Fifth years on, players remembered small things. Prop Dunworth scored few tries but he remembered a short ball from Shaw and a try in this game.
More remembered it was played with the old black-tipped Adidas ball without laces.
Ross, 19 at the time, wondered where his career might have headed if didn't have hard heads like Dunworth and Pilecki in the front-row beside him.
Hillhouse, a buffet destroyer in his playing days, left nothing on his plate this week either.
Shambrook is now a Masters CrossFit Games champion. Only a few chided him for being too fit for the lunch.
"It's an very easy gathering. It takes about five minutes to revert to type and things just come back from 50 years ago. We spent a lot of time together," McLean nodded.
Long before rugby league’s Andrew Johns, McLean mastered ripping a towering up-and-under that spiralled skywards as a torpedo punt and returned towards earth in unpredictable arcs.
McLean too took more from the game than the final result.
“We were fledglings against a more experienced NSW side. That match was a bit of a benchmark for us in realising we can play like this and we did for the next few years,” McLean said.
“We went from three Queenslanders in a Wallabies side to 13 at one point. It was a boost for the whole state.”
A roaring Queensland crowd can get behind a 2026 team of history seekers on Saturday night at Suncorp Stadium.
