Mark Greer knew his 1999 Australian Schoolboys team was special.

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They showed him how special on the very first play of their extraordinary European tour, in a Test against France.

“We kicked off and their second-rower caught it on the tryline,” the coach recalls.

“Before he got to the 10, four of our guys smashed him. Just smashed him. The guy’s gone backwards two metres in the air, the ball’s popped out and we’ve caught it; it’s gone straight into (winger) Trent Clayton’s hands and he’s put it down.

“That was 6-0 and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Holy f—king hell! How good’s that, this is unbelievable!’”

The final scoreline: 76-0.

That side of 25 years ago side went unbeaten through eight games in France, Ireland and England. It is widely regarded as the greatest Australian Schoolboys team in history; a view backed by some astonishing statistics.

From it came 2738 NRL appearances, 101 State of Origin games, 79 Tests, and a vast array of other honours. Six players became Kangaroos, four of them within three years (see full honours list at the bottom of the page).

The team also produced some tragic hard-luck stories, and some remarkable tour hijinks – including a brush with authority that almost became an international incident.

NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS AND NARRABEEN CAMP

A certain ferocious backrower became an Australian Secondary Schools Rugby League national champion with NSW Combined Catholic Colleges at Tweed Heads in 1999. He went on to play 348 NRL games, 24 Origins and 32 Tests, as well as captaining a club’s maiden NRL premiership.

That kid was Paul Gallen – and he didn’t make the Australian Schoolboys team. Nor did a strapping fullback from NSWCHS who went on to score an iconic NRL grand final try, Pat Richards. And neither did a trio of notable prospects from the runner-up, Queensland SSRL: Matt Bowen, Dallas Johnson and Aaron Payne.

Gallen missed out while best mate Brett Sargent and another Parramatta Marist boy, hooker Daniel Irvine, made the forward pack. So did a gun Westfields Sports High prospect, Danny Sullivan, and a fiery Queensland lad from Beaudesert named Corey Parker.

“That’s where my battle was started with Gal, way back then,” Parker says.

“I was really nervous when they named the team of whether he was going to make it or I was going to make it, because we had sort of duelled through the carnival. And as it turned out, we duelled for the next 16 years of playing rugby league together.”

The player of the tournament was NSWCCC’s five-eighth from Marcellin College, Luke Branighan.

“His football brain was the best I’ve ever seen. He was just unbelievable,” Greer says.

“Physically, he wasn’t strong, he wasn’t fast, he wasn’t anything, but it was just amazing his instincts for it.”

Branighan dominated the national championships final with Marcellin classmate Braith Anasta. In green and gold, his halves partner was an Indigenous kid from Erindale College.

“Arthur Little was a freak at 16, he was probably the best footballer running around at the age of 16 in the country,” Branighan recalls.

“He was an instinctive footballer, good speed, freakish ability and I sort of guided the side around, so we were a good mix.”

Branighan was named co-captain, alongside a powerhouse young forward who was repeating Year 12, John Rowbotham.

“The boys loved Johnny Row,” says Branighan, who was thrust into an extraordinary Dragons debut the following year when Anthony Mundine quit rugby league for boxing.

Before flying out, the team went into camp for four days at Narrabeen, on Sydney’s northern beaches. Greer was already an experienced coach, well-versed in the habits of junior footballers, yet astonished by how much this mob ate: “Four times what I would eat!”

He carefully identified the hotheads, earmarking Parker, Adam Woolnough and Shane Tronc. Astute picks: in a squad that otherwise got on famously, Parker recalls a brewing interstate rivalry with Woolnough.

“I actually had a couple of blues with ‘Wooly’. Ended up having a decent, respectful relationship with him, but early doors … he’s from country NSW, didn’t take too much shit and neither did I, and we ended up butting heads,” he says.

“We had a couple of blues, one on the tour and in Junior Origin a year or two later. Just neither of us took a backward step, typical guys coming through the grades and think, ‘It doesn’t matter, if we’ve gotta have a fight, we will’ – and that’s what we did.”

Greer had special plans for the firebrands. Having taken the Australian Schoolboys to face the Junior Kiwis in New Zealand the year before, the coach knew to expect dodgy refereeing abroad and followed suit in his training games.

“I would not be fair to them. I’d say, ‘Ah, you’re offside, penalty, ah, you’re offside again’ … and they were always onside. We were getting guys blowing up at training and going, ‘This is bullshit, Greery, this is bullshit!’ … and I’d say, ‘Right, this is exactly what’s going to happen on the field when we get overseas. The referees are absolutely going to cheat, it’s going to be blatantly obvious. If you backchat, you’re going to be off and we’re going to keep getting marched 10 and they’re going to get worse and worse. You don’t say a word to the ref, no matter how bad you think you’re getting ripped off. You turn around, go back your 10 metres and start again’. There was some push-back at the start, but after two or three trainings of me drilling it into them, they got it.”

A veteran of the 1998 side, along with Branighan, Rowbotham and Justin Hodges, Mark Gasnier was just happy to be there. He might have been ruled out, given that he was destined to play NRL football next year and the trip cut into St George Illawarra’s pre-season off the back of an agonising grand final loss to Melbourne. Luckily, Gasnier was dealing with a former Australian Schoolboys coach and teacher at the Saints.

“I was at a stage where I was going to go straight up into the top 25 … but David Waite said, ‘We’ll worry about that when you get back mate – England, Ireland and France Schoolboys is an experience you have to have in your life’,” Gasnier recalls.

“Luckily he was receptive to that and to have his blessing to go on the tour and know I was still in his thoughts was a big help to me.”

The team gelled quickly. Players in NRL systems like Gasnier and the Parramatta boys were already young professionals, well-drilled and conditioned.

While plots were busily being hatched abroad, the Aussies’ opponents had no idea what was about to hit them.

FRANCE: ‘IS HE F—KING SERIOUS?’

After 36 hours of travelling – British Airways to Heathrow via Bangkok, another flight to Toulouse then a bus to the southern French village of Limoux – Greer had a surprise for his players.

“He was a hard man, Greery,” team manager Michael Fischer says.

“All we wanted to do was have a hot shower and crash, and he said, ‘Nup, we’re going training. Put on your gear, boys.’ One of the kids whispered to me, ‘‘Fish’, is he f—king serious? I said, ‘Yep, let’s go!’ We had to jog about 2km down the road to a ground on a freezing cold afternoon. He said at the end of the tour that he deliberately did that. He wanted to set the tone.”

The players soon got one back.

“The first night, for some stupid reason, we all decided to dye our hair blonde,” Irvine says.

“I can vividly remember being in the bathroom with future NRL stars and all dyeing our hair blonde. Wasn’t the smartest idea, but that was a lot of fun.”

The Aussie lads took to their surroundings and the locals to them. Limoux had 9400 inhabitants, part of France’s tiny rugby league heartland. The old timers were besotted by Gasnier and Irvine, having seen their iconic uncles – Reg Gasnier and Kevin Irvine – tour thrice together with the Kangaroos between 1959-68. Mark Gasnier, who nine years later moved to Paris to play rugby union, found far more listings of his surname in France’s phonebooks than at home and enjoyed the boulangeries (French bakeries).

Food presented a few early problems. Cheese and cold cuts for breakfast were a foreign concept, as was wine being a staple beverage. Dragons prospects Junior Langi and Albert Talipeau thought they were being pranked when their cereal was served in a drink container.

There were no such problems with the football, barring the refereeing that Greer had foreseen. His tough-love preparation paid off in that first Test against France, even if it was 36-0 by half-time.

“We scored about three tries really quickly and it was just men and boys playing against each other. But all of a sudden, our 10 metres was 25 metres back and theirs was like one and a half metres back!” Greer says.

“It was just unbelievable. I think the penalty count was about 20-1 and 12 of those penalties were when we had the ball. Just unbelievable! It would have been 100-0 to be honest, it was that one-sided.”

A local official preferred a century on the scoreboard to what was taking place at Limoux’s Stade de I’Aiguille. And on face value, he was not a man to be trifled with.

“There was a fella over there who was one of the main organisers, his name was Louis Bonnery. The kids always reckoned he was part of the Mafia, he looked like one of those guys. He was an ex-international in France and a really nice bloke,” says Kevin Sharp, the Australian tour manager.

“When we were playing the Test, at half-time he went out on to the middle of the field and he got the referee and he was almost strangling him. You could hear what he was saying: ‘We’re here to put on an exhibition! We’re not here to try to make it level, so stop penalising the Australians for things that they’re not doing wrong!’ He was right up him, he just wanted it to be fair. He said, ‘I don’t care if we get beaten by 100, let the people see what they’re like!’ It was quite amusing.”

That first Test team read: 1. Justin Hodges 2. Junior Langi 3. Mark Gasnier 4. Jamie Lyon 5. Trent Clayton 6. Luke Branighan 7. Arthur Little 8. Shane Tronc 9. Daniel Irvine 10. Adam Woolnough 11. John Rowbotham 12. Danny Sullivan 13. Braith Anasta. Bench: 14. Corey Parker 15. Nathan Jordan 16. Brett Sargent 17. Christian Orsini 18. Micheal Luck. Anasta was man of the match, Tronc players’ player.

Brent Tate ended up notching the most Kangaroos appearances among the squad, and later featured alongside Hodges and Gasnier in the Australian Schoolboys Team of the Century, but he couldn’t get a start in 1999’s first-choice side.

“Hodges, Tate, Gasnier, Lyon … they’re four generational players, world-class centres. Crazy,” Parker says.

Back then, they were just kids. Buoyed by their romping first-up win, they were having the time of their life, led by their skipper.

“Johnny Row was a legend. He used to love his beat-boxing and his rapping,” says Gasnier – not knowing back then that Rowbotham would become a recording artist when footy didn’t work out.

“Everyone would always wind him up to get going, because they loved it. He’d be beat-boxing or rapping on the bus, or at training, wherever it would be. He was always good, always brought the mood up.

“We had a heap of fun with each other. There was a lot of taking the mickey out of each other and all sorts of things. You have to remember back then, there was no phones, so it was just a great way for the guys to get to know each other, staff included.”

Having no phones proved a blessing.

Two days after the Test, the squad ventured to Andorra, a tiny, mountainous country known for duty free shopping. It was snowing. Ahead of lunch, the boys were given half-an-hour to browse…

“We thought no more of it. We got in the bus and we went then down to Perpignan,” Sharp says. “Nothing seemed to be out of place.”

They travelled to Carcassonne for their second match, against a French Schools Selection side of players from the region. Talipeau, Tate, Anthony Quinn, Warren Aiken, Greg Boulos, Blake Henzell, Mark Minichiello and Daniel Ninness this time made the team, captained by Orsini.

Though the French were outmatched, they were up for it … at first.

“From the moment we left the tunnel, I could tell this would be a hard game because one of their front-rowers (#8) was crying and staring me down with a vicious look in his eye, such was the pride he was playing with,” Luck wrote in the team’s tour diary.

“Little did he know that later in the match, he would be crying in pain after Corey Parker and Danny Sullivan got to him. The match was ferocious and there were some huge hits from the Aussies, which made the Frenchies scared to run, so they took penalty shots at goal all the time.”

Final score: 32-8. MOM: Parker.

IRELAND: ILLEGAL ARMS AND DODGY DECKS

London’s Gatwick Airport was the next destination, for a connecting flight to Dublin. There was a hiccup.

“Mr Sharp, the tour manager of the Australian Schoolboys – please come to the luggage area.”

Sharp was greeted by a customs official, flanked by two security guards. They had four bags, complete with name tags. The official suggested that Sharp fetch the owners for a quiet chat. The bags had just been through X-rays, he said.

Revealed were replica pistols – spud guns – and miniature crossbows. Andorra duty free’s finest.

The Troubles in Northern Ireland had ended just the year before with the Good Friday Agreement. Tensions regarding IRA violence were still high in Ireland and the UK.

Sharp says the customs official averted a crisis.

“He said, ‘If you want to leave it in there, when you get to Dublin and you go to pick up your luggage, you’ll have to go to the luggage counter and when you pick it up, they’ll arrest you because you’re taking illegal arms into Ireland. Or else, you can have them removed now and we’ll put them in the bin’.

“The boys all said, ‘All right, you can put them in the bin! We don’t want them, we don’t want them!’ Obviously they were going to take them home as souvenirs but we weren’t even the slightest bit aware of any of it going on. We thought that’d go well in the headlines: ‘Australian Schoolboys arrested!’

The trouble with bags wasn’t over.

“When we got on the plane at Gatwick and we were just taxiing out, I looked out the window and saw one of those big luggage trays full of our gear,” Sharp says.

“It was still sitting on the bloody runway and I’m going, ‘Oh, no!’ We were only going to be there three days and get over there and find out that half our gear is missing. We finally got it back the morning we were going back to London. I spent most of my time trying to get gear for the kids and I didn’t get to see the game.”

There was another special greeting on the Emerald Isle.

“They put us on a training ground that, I swear, I took four steps and I my feet sank down 12 inches and I could not get them out,” Greer says.

“It had rained and the ground was soft, but I think they watered it for two weeks before we came. I’m going, ‘These guys aren’t going to have any legs!’ We went out there for about two minutes and training was cancelled.

“That was the sort of thing that we came up against. I just called the boys in and said, ‘Look, they obviously want to tire us out, you can’t train in this’. We just used that as a positive mindset, that we were going to pay them back on the field for that sort of thing.”

They did, beating an Irish Students XIII 56-10 at Dublin’s Blackrock RFC. “It was the coldest, windiest, bleakest day in the history of the planet,” Fischer recalls. English scouts were at that game and those following, armed with video cameras, scouting the dominant Aussies.

Though many families travelled with their sons on tour, the lads weren’t shy about experiencing the local nightlife at times and Dublin was a solid outing. A sleep-in was followed by some Christmas shopping before hopping a plane to Manchester.

ENGLAND: ALL-IN BRAWLS AND ARMY FIREWORKS

An ambush awaited in England. The Poms, routinely hammered by touring Australian Schoolboys sides since 1972, moved the goalposts by rallying their finest young professional players rather than a bunch of hopeless amateurs for the Test matches.

Branded the Great Britain and Ireland Young Lions, they were formed by the British Amateur Rugby League Association and its professional counterpart the Rugby Football League. Every player bar one in their first Test line-up was attached to a Super League club and some, like Chev Walker, Jamie Jones-Buchanan (Leeds) and Mark Smith (Wigan) were already young first-teamers who went on to glittering careers.

Future superstar Leon Pryce would have played if not for a foot injury. They were coached by Steve McCormack, then an assistant at Salford.

“For the first time, it’s the best against the best,” BARLA secretary Ian Cooper declared at the time.

Sharp remembers the Brits being confident of breaking their winless streak.

“They tried to ambush us a bit with that. They thought they’d have a good enough side to beat us and they were basically a year older too,” he says.

“That didn’t work out, it backfired on them. We beat them quite convincingly and they were a bit quieter after that.”

There was some cannon fodder for the Aussies to get through first. They smashed Cumbria 62-0 the day after landing in England, on a sloped, freezing ground three hours’ drive north at Whitehaven. Lancashire copped a 54-0 hiding at Robin Park Arena in Wigan. The players got to rub shoulders with Warriors Super League stars like Jason Robinson, though all eyes were firmly on the first Test at Widnes.

It proved unforgettable … though not entirely for the right reasons.

Referee Steve Ganson’s penalty count finished 21-5 in favour of the home side. A bemused Greer stood with the fourth official trying to make sense of what he was seeing, before telling him to bugger off.

Still, things weren’t going to script for the Lions. With Australia controlling the first half, out came Plan B: a premeditated all-in brawl, starting at a scrum.

“I haven’t been punched in footy very often, but their hooker just went ‘whack’ straight into my nose,” Irvine says.

“We retaliated and I’m pretty sure I got sent to the sin bin, which was the only time in my footy career I got sent to the bin. We probably won the fight too, let’s say.”

One big-name English player made a beeline for Gasnier from across field.

“I got king-hit from behind and it was all on. I think it went on up the tunnel too. The Pommy boys don’t mind that,” Gasnier says.

Branighan saw the perpetrator but asked that he remain anonymous, recalling: “It was a massive stink with 26 players in it. A real big one and probably a few of their guys were lucky to stay on the field.

“A player ran a long distance to king-hit Gaz, and Corey Parker and Junior Langi gave him a good touch-up. They made sure he didn’t do it again.”

Parker admits: “I may have got stuck into him … But when you’re 17, and I’d come from Beaudesert and a school with tough individuals, you held your own and you never took a backward step.”

Langi, branded a “Junior Mal Meninga” when he later signed with Melbourne Storm, had a proper day out. His two tries were matched by Gasnier, who played out the game despite being mugged. He was pure class.

“The referee made things very difficult but Mark Gasnier, he had a few touches that just turned the game. A couple of things that he did in that first Test were very special,” Branighan says.

“Most centres, you’ve got to make them look good and put them into space. With Mark, you just give him the ball and he does it all himself.”

Irvine was man of the match.

“He was a tough kid. Those big English forwards just ran at him, he was in the line and he just belted them,” Fischer says.

The Aussies were buzzing after escaping with more points and less bruises than the Poms, yet they copped it from their coach.

“Greery, being the sort of coach he was, wasn’t quite happy about us getting in a scuffle even though we were defending ourselves,” Irvine says.

“So the next training session, we were doing push-ups in the snow as a bit of a wake-up call to have pride in the jersey and not fall to their level next time we played them. So that was a tough one for teenage boys, but we learnt our lesson and didn’t get in trouble again.”

Greer did soften, realising what a unique moment this was for his players.

“Half the guys hadn’t seen snow. The guys from North Queensland, the Indigenous kids, they’re going, ‘What’s this?!’” he says.

“So I’ve grabbed some snow and hit someone with it and we just had a big snowball fight after that. And they were all running around and sliding on it and wrestling in it. It was a great experience, fantastic.”

The brawl, though, was a serious headache for rugby league in the UK. Top former Australian referee Greg McCallum was boss of Britain’s refs at the time.

“They wouldn’t give us the footage of that,” Sharp says.

“I went to Greg McCallum and I said, ‘We want a copy of the footage’. He said, ‘I don’t think you really want to see it. We’re trying to clean the game up over here and we’d just like to push this one underneath the carpet a bit’. I said, ‘Well, I hope you realise we weren’t the ones that started it, it was pretty well orchestrated’. He said, ‘Yeah, I understand that, but I don’t want any copies of this footage to go out. A couple of your blokes could be charged too, so we’ll just leave it’.

“The whole English side must have been on some sort of a call. They weren’t going very well in the game, so they decided they were going to fight back. That didn’t work very well either because most of our young blokes went all right, they were better at fighting than what their mob were. That slowed them up a bit. Corey Parker in particular, for a young bloke he fought very well. They sort of settled down and played footy after that, but it was definitely orchestrated.”

Bruised but unbeaten, the Aussies posted a 64-0 demolition of Yorkshire three days later, with just 48 hours after that until the second Test. The Lions turned up to play football rather than fight at Hull, and the tourists were getting tired.

“The second Test they actually had us on toast,” Branighan says. The half-time score was 8-8.

Yet the late doyen of British rugby league writers, Dave Hadfield, was at that game at The Boulevard, a gritty old stadium demolished 11 years later; and he wrote of a relatively comfortable Australian victory, in which Hodges was man of the match.

“There is no team in rugby league with a record quite like the Australian Schoolboys, who have never lost a game in 27 years of coming to this country. They never truly looked like losing that distinction in the second and final Test of this tour at Hull last night, but their opponents could take a good deal of credit for giving them as tight a contest as they did,” Hadfield observed for The Independent.

“In the 57th minute … Australia scored the try that gave them the sort of lead they needed to maintain their perfect record in Europe. Fittingly it came via a touch of genuine class from their centre, Mark Gasnier, whose flicked pass sent Justin Hodges striding for the line.

“Five minutes from time, the Australian winger Trent Clayton lost (Chris) Thorman’s high kick and Walker pounced on the loose ball. It was not quite enough, but in the context of the one-sided history of this fixture it was a memorable effort.”

Australia’s unbeaten record against British sides was front of mind and that mighty team upheld the green and gold tradition. Greer recalls being told plenty of times by the Poms that their professionalised Lions would beat his boys. No chance.

“The reinforcement of our organisation’s past undefeated record got us through in the end,” Greer wrote in his tour report.

“The win cannot be understated. The final whistle was an extremely emotional moment. It was also a great relief. We celebrated out success and reminisced about the preceding five weeks. It was an experience I will never forget.”

Branighan says: “We just hung in there and we toughed out a win. The Test series could have easily been 1-1.

“They’re the two things I remember: the first Test for the fight and Mark’s touches, then the second Test they were actually really good. They could have easily come away with the win. And that’s probably the biggest thing with the tour: everyone talks about how good our side was, that it was possibly one of the better Australian Schoolboys sides to be put together, but I think the main thing to come out of it was the opposition. It was probably the best under-19s they’ve put together, ever.”

The Lions captain — Paul Noone, who enjoyed a fine career in senior football — has fond recollections of that encounter despite another defeat. He spotted a 1999 Australian Schoolboys team photo on Facebook recently and left a comment.

“Some great players in that team … to captain my country against these players was an honour,” Noone wrote. “I’ve still got Braith Anasta’s jersey as I swapped my top with his. Great memories.”

It was a pivotal time of life off the football field too. While the Aussies were in Hull, HSC results came through back home. Irvine was just back from exploring the city with teammates when he got a late-night phone call from his sister.

95!

“It was more than I probably thought I’d get but it was a nice surprise while I was on tour,” Irvine says, having used the mark to study chiropractic; which he still combines with work as a Sydney firefighter.

The majority of the players were cooked after the second Test, not keen for their final tour game. Thankfully, it was cancelled … unbeknown to Fischer, who copped a wind-up.

“We were on a bus going to our last game, which was against a London combination. It was snowing and it was cold,” he recalls.

“Greery hadn’t announced the team and he whispered something like this to me on the bus: ‘I think I might use Gaz in the second row … and I might use Corey Parker at fullback.’ I said, ‘Are you serious? It’s still a game on tour!’ But unbeknown to me – everybody else knew – the game had been cancelled because of the snow.

“They took the piss out of poor old me and I thought he was going to experiment in the last game. I said, ‘You can’t do that, you can’t move players around like that, we don’t want to lose a game!’ Greery said, ‘I can do what I like, I’m the coach!’ They all thought it was hilarious, they got me a good one.”

The final combined scoreline for the tour: 384-34,

The team was then staying at a Royal Air Force barracks in Uxbridge, just out of London. The boys had shopping time in town and their purchases again caused drama.

“Two or three kids decided to buy some bloody fireworks,” Sharp says.

“This place we were staying at had a lovely big oval in the middle of the army barracks, a very bloody secure army barracks. We were sitting in the offices just having a drink and one of the sergeants on duty came rushing in and he said, ‘You blokes had better get out here. We’ve got three young blokes that have been letting fireworks off in the main oval. We’ve had half of the bloody armed forces out here wondering why we were under attack!’

“The boys didn’t even think about what they were doing; you’re in an army barracks and hearing bloody fireworks off, you don’t know if they’re bloody real [explosions] or not! Anyway, they were very good about it, they just laughed it off; but they said, ‘You’ve got to wake up to yourself, fellas, you can’t do that sort of thing!’ The boys were very apologetic.”

The plane ride couldn’t come soon enough. They skipped the country on December 21, a Qantas flight out of Heathrow, arriving home on December 23. Strangely, it was colder back in the Sydney summer than London’s winter.

HEROES AND HARD LUCK STORIES

Gasnier, Lyon and Anasta were playing for the Kangaroos just two years later. Tate followed in 2002, then Hodges (2006) and Parker (2011). Each Test representative from that 1999 side also tasted premiership glory, on top of their plethora of individual honours.

Eighteen players reached the NRL against just eight who didn’t. There were players who enjoyed superb careers without entering the superstar bracket, like Minichiello, Luck and Anthony Quinn, and those who enjoyed very good careers, like Woolnough and Tronc.

Then there were players who never made it, tasting just fleeting NRL action or none at all. Some were just short of the necessary talent or desire. Others copped a cruel hand from Lady Luck.

Standouts on that unfortunate list include the co-captains, Rowbotham and Branighan, plus Sullivan, who the footy gods granted just six games.

“Christ, if you want to know the outstanding player that didn’t make it, that was ‘Sully’. He was a backrower that could have had a couple of hundred NRL games, easily, had he not had a catastrophic knee injury,” says Irvine, who himself would have played far more than 53 games had his body co-operated.

Says Parker: “When I came through, I was good mates with Cam Smith, who obviously went on to become the GOAT of rugby league – and I thought Danny Irvine was a very, very good dummy-half. I rated him very highly.”

Rowbotham was on a North Queensland Cowboys contract by age 16, yet instead of a star became a brutal cautionary tale; “A tragedy,” Fischer says of his thwarted career. In a 2019 interview with News Corp, Rowbotham gave an astonishing insight into why he never played a single NRL game.

He claimed to have played about 80 games in 1998, before having a shoulder reconstruction, then had the same surgery again after that 1999 Schoolboys tour. He was called-up to train with Tim Sheens’ NRL squad in 2000, when disaster struck.

“This was the turning point. I remember getting the momentum I needed to push for a first-grade spot but then it was a freak accident. One of the players gripped where my scar was from my two previous shoulder operations. I remember a snap,” he said.

“It was a really acute snap and pain under my skin. You try and brush it off but the next day it blew up really badly.”

As for Branighan, the dream turned to despair after replacing Mundine and playing 15 games in his first NRL season with the Dragons. He was sidelined by knee reconstructions in 2001 and 2002 while at Cronulla, and the game moved on.

He passed back through his junior club South Sydney and remembers playing better football for Balmain’s reserve grade than he ever did as a Saints prodigy. But another NRL opportunity never came.

It was a hard fate to accept so soon after those heady days in green and gold, he says, though he then had a terrific time playing in France, England and in country football.

“You look at life two ways,” says Branighan, now an SLSO at Matraville Sports High, on top of rugby league coaching and talent spotting.

“Looking back now, I was grateful I got a shot. But at the same time … if I don’t do my knees, without sounding arrogant, I probably go on and play 200 games of NRL. But that’s the way the world works. I went down another path and it was probably a good grounding; and I got to see the world, got to experience some stuff that maybe I wouldn’t have been able to if I didn’t have those injuries.

“Danny Sullivan was a great player. Just a fantastic work rate, very athletic. Him and Johnny Row … that’s the way life is, unfortunately. It can be cruel to some guys.”

But whatever followed, those players will always have 1999.

“I missed Schoolies and my formal, but that was fine,” Parker says. “It was the trip of a lifetime.”

“Just a great time to be alive,” says Branighan. “And just a champion bunch of blokes.”

1999 TOUR MATCH RESULTS

TEST: Australian Schoolboys 76 (Clayton 2, Langi 2, Gasnier 2, Tronc, Hodges, Lyon, Branighan, Little, Sullivan, Parker tries; Anasta 10, Gasnier 2 goals) def. France 0

Australian Schoolboys 32 def. French School Selection 8

Australian Schoolboys 56 def. Irish Student Rugby League Chairman’s XIII 10

Australian Schoolboys 62 def. Cumbria 0

Australian Schoolboys 54 def. Lancashire 0

FIRST TEST: Australian Schoolboys 24 (Langi 2, Gasnier 2, Hodges tries; Anasta 2 goals) def. Great Britain and Ireland Young Lions 4

Australian Schoolboys 64 def. Yorkshire 0

SECOND TEST: Australian Schoolboys 16 (Sargent, Hodges tries; Anasta 4 goals) def. Great Britain and Ireland Young Lions 12

Australian Schoolboys v London, the South and Wales CANCELLED

PLAYER HONOURS LIST

Braith Anasta, Marcellin College, Randwick NSWCCC – Dally M Rookie of the Year (2001), Dally M Five-Eighth of the Year (2006), RLPA Player of the Year (2008), Dally M Captain of the Year (2010); 5 Tests (4 Australia – 1 try, 1 goal; 1 Greece – 4 tries, 15 goals), 10 State of Origin games (NSW, 2 series wins – 2 tries), 7 City-Country games (City); 288 NRL games (Bulldogs, Roosters, Wests Tigers – 88 tries, 122 goals, 18 field goals, 614 points), NRL premiership (Bulldogs 2004)

Luke Branighan, Marcellin College, Randwick NSWCCC – 1 Test (Malta); 16 NRL games (Dragons, Sharks – 2 tries); 6 Challenge Cup games (Toulouse, Gateshead, Halifax – 9 tries, 2 goals)

Trent Clayton, Tullawong State High QSSRL – 1 Test (France), 18 NRL games (Roosters, Wests Tigers, Panthers – 8 tries); 3 Challenge Cup games (Toulouse – 1 try, 1 goal)

Mark Gasnier, Peakhurst High NSWCHS – Australian Schoolboys Team of the Century (centre), 2 Dally M Centre of the Year (2005, 2006); 15 Tests (Australia, 11 tries), 12 State of Origin games (NSW, 2 series wins – 4 tries, 1 goal), 2 City-Country games (City, 1 try); 174 NRL games (Dragons – 92 tries, 26 goals, 420 points), NRL premiership (Dragons 2010)

Justin Hodges, Cairns State High QSSRL – Australian Schoolboys Team of the Century (centre), Dally M Centre of the Year (2007); 13 Tests (Australia – 4 tries), 24 State of Origin games (Queensland, 9 series wins – 5 tries, 1 goal), 3 All Stars games (Indigenous); 251 NRL games (Broncos, Roosters – 99 tries, 1 goal), 2 NRL premierships (Roosters 2002, Broncos 2006)

Daniel Irvine, Parramatta Marist High NSWCCC – 53 NRL games (Eels, Bulldogs, Rabbitohs – 5 tries)

Junior Langi, Trinity Catholic College, Auburn NSWCCC – 53 NRL games (Dragons, Storm, Eels – 8 tries); 34 Super League games (Salford – 7 tries), 3 Challenge Cup games (Salford)

Micheal Luck, Kirwan State High QSSRL – 1 Australia PM’s XIII game; 226 NRL games (Cowboys, Warriors – 12 tries)

Jamie Lyon, Parramatta Marist High NSWCCC – 4 Dally M Centre of the Year (2010, 2011, 2013, 2014), 2 Dally M Captain of the Year (2012, 2014), Man of Steel Award (2005), 3 RLIF Centre of the Year (2011, 2012, 2013); 8 Tests (Australia – 4 tries, 2 goals), 10 State of Origin games (NSW, 1 series win – 1 try, 8 goals), 1 City-Country game (Country), 1 All Star Game (NRL); 294 NRL games (Eels, Sea Eagles – 122 tries, 533 goals, 1554 points), 2 NRL premierships (Sea Eagles 2008, 2011); 55 Super League games (St Helens – 39 tries, 172 goals, 500 points), Super League premiership (St Helens 2006), 8 Challenge Cup games (St Helens – 7 tries, 41 goals, 100 points), Challenge Cup title (St Helens 2006)

Mark Minichiello, Westfields Sports High NSWCHS – 6 Tests (Italy – 1 try), 5 City-Country games (City – 2 tries); 259 NRL games (Rabbitohs, Roosters, Titans – 48 tries); 122 Super League games (Hull FC – 20 tries), 16 Challenge Cup games (Hull FC – 2 tries), 2 Challenge Cup titles (Hull FC 2016, 2017)

Christian Orsini, Terra Sancta College NSWCCC – 1 Test (Italy)

Corey Parker, Beaudesert State High QSSRL – Dally M Lock of the Year (2013), Dally M Representative Player of the Year (2013), Wally Lewis Medallist (2015), 2 Rugby League Week Player of the Year (2011, 2013), RLIF Lock of the Year (2013); 13 Tests (Australia – 4 goals), Rugby League World Cup title (2013), 19 State of Origin games (Queensland, 5 series wins), 1 All Star game (NRL); 347 NRL games (Broncos – 39 tries, 586 goals, 1328 points), NRL premiership (Broncos 2006)

Anthony Quinn, St Francis Xavier College, Newcastle NSWCCC – 3 State of Origin games (NSW – 2 tries), 3 City-Country games (Country – 2 tries); 210 NRL games (Knights, Storm – 86 tries), NRL premiership (Storm 2012)

Brett Sargent, Parramatta Marist High NSWCCC – 3 NRL games (Sharks)

Danny Sullivan, Westfields Sports High NSWCHS – 6 NRL games (Eels, Warriors)

Albert Talipeau, De La Salle College, Cronulla NSWCCC – 8 Tests (Samoa – 1 goal); 9 NRL games (Roosters); 10 Super League games (Wakefield Trinity), 3 Challenge Cup games (Wakefield Trinity)

Brent Tate, Clontarf Beach State High QSSRL – Australian Schoolboys Team of the Century; 25 Tests (Australia – 15 tries), Rugby League World Cup title (2013), 1 Australia PM’s XIII game, 23 State of Origin games (Queensland, 6 series wins – 5 tries), 1 All Star game (NRL); 229 NRL games (Broncos, Warriors, Cowboys – 81 tries)

Shane Tronc, Wavell State High QSSRL – 1 Australia PM’s XIII game; 147 NRL games (Cowboys, Broncos – 10 tries); 11 Super League games (Wakefield Trinity – 2 tries)

Adam Woolnough, Taree High NSWCHS – 1 Australia PM’s XIII game; 155 NRL games (Knights, Panthers, Storm – 12 tries)

1999 TOURISTS AND THEIR SCHOOLS

Warren Aiken, St Edmund’s College ACT

Braith Anasta, Marcellin College, Randwick NSWCCC

Greg Boulos, Westfields Sports High NSWCHS

Luke Branighan, Marcellin College, Randwick NSWCCC (c)

Trent Clayton, Tullawong State High QSSRL

Mark Gasnier, Peakhurst High NSWCHS

Blake Henzell, Palm Beach Currumbin State High QSSRL

Justin Hodges, Cairns State High QSSRL

Daniel Irvine, Parramatta Marist High NSWCCC

Nathan Jordan, Palm Beach Currumbin State High QSSRL

Junior Langi, Trinity Catholic College, Auburn NSWCCC

Arthur Little, Erindale College ACT

Micheal Luck, Kirwan State High QSSRL

Jamie Lyon, Parramatta Marist High NSWCCC

Mark Minichiello, Westfields Sports High NSWCHS

Daniel Ninness, St Joseph’s College, Port Macquarie NSWCCC

Christian Orsini, Terra Sancta College NSWCCC

Corey Parker, Beaudesert State High QSSRL

Anthony Quinn, St Francis Xavier College, Newcastle NSWCCC

John Rowbotham, Kirwan State High QSSRL (c)

Brett Sargent, Parramatta Marist High NSWCCC

Danny Sullivan, Westfields Sports High NSWCHS

Albert Talipeau, De La Salle College, Cronulla NSWCCC

Brent Tate, Clontarf Beach State High QSSRL

Shane Tronc, Wavell State High QSSRL

Adam Woolnough, Taree High NSWCHS

Coach: Mark Greer, Hawker College ACT

Team manager: Michael Fischer, Holsworthy High

Tour Manager: Kevin Sharp, Lake Macquarie High

Trainer: Peter Sinclair, Carmel College Brisbane

Physiotherapist: Scott Thornton Brisbane