The Dominators

IT was the most dominant season in Royals’ history.

They put 76 points on Uni-Norths, beat Gungahlin 44-3 and piled on 13 tries in a 95-12 romp over Easts at Phillip District.

There followed wins over Wests (46-7), Tuggeranong (49-14) and Queanbeyan (42-17).

When they beat Wests again, 41-18, in the top-of-the-table clash in June, coach Wayne Southwell described it as “the most boring game of rugby I’ve ever seen in my time at the club”.

The players didn’t mind - they were having a ball.

“The vibe was unreal, literally from day one of pre-season,” Ben Johnston says in Blue Bloods, the book celebrating the club’s 75-year anniversary.

“There was a different feeling, a different energy. It translated into games but also after games. All of our social events were packed, everyone from first grade to fourth grade. Everyone was interacting with everyone, there was no segregation. Everyone with one club.

“It was even up to the point, you could go out to town, by yourself, and walk into a club, and know you would find a group of Royals boys, eight to 15 people, all together.

“That was the foundation we started with that year. And obviously, towards the back end of the year, we began scoring a lot of points.”

There were sevens men like Tom Cusack proving themselves in fifteens, looking for a crack in the Brumbies.

It was Andy Muirhead’s first year down from Brisbane, he was a revelation. He calls 2017 “his favourite year in rugby”.

“It was just so enjoyable, the most enjoyable year of rugby I’ve ever played. Everything we did worked. As a team and a club, we were so close.”

When Muirhead made the Brumbies, George Morseu came in. He’d only turned up from Darwin that year after fellow Sevens man Tim Cornforth talked to him at the Darwin Hottest Sevens.

Morseu had grown up on a tiny island in the Torres Strait and played sevens for Papua New Guinea in Hong Kong. He could run 10.6 for the hundred. He would, as they say, do.

“You cannot coach the pace George has,” Southwell said. “You’re born with it.”

Morseu would score nine tries in 11 games. He tackled like a ram. He went up to the Brumbies, too.

There were two top halfbacks, Brent Hamlin and Pedro Rolando. Guys who could run. Guys who could ball play.

“Every move we had options,” Johnston says. “It made it really hard for other teams to defend.”

Spiral balls were flung. Kicking was moot. Tries rained. Midway through the last third of the season, there was even thought that maybe they needed to lose one so they didn’t get too cocky.

Johnston could see the logic in it, sort of. But then he pivoted.

“I worked out we didn’t need to lose one. We just needed to stay grounded - which our team was very good at.

“But the more we kept playing the more we kept winning.”

At training on a Tuesday there would be no revelling in how they had so scorched the earth with Team X or that the coming weekend should be another easy win. It was just back to business.

“It was ‘work hard here and we’ll reap the rewards on the weekend,’” Johnston says. “No-one was sitting out, everyone was training. If they weren’t it was because they were injured.

“And everyone was doing it; it was a full club mentality. It was like nothing I have seen. And as much as you try and replicate it, that buy-in from everyone across the club - players, management, coaches - we were all in.

“And it wasn’t just coming from myself as captain; it was coming from a number of leaders in the club. If anyone started to carry on, they just got pulled straight back into line. No, boys, back to the job. This is what we’re doing.

“It was an awesome environment to be part of and had a lot to do with our success.”

When Royals beat Uni-Norths 45-12 in the last round they finished four points shy of 700 points for the season. It meant that in 14 games Royals were 0.3 of one point from averaging 50 points a game.

When the team beat Wests 28-12 in the grand final, they “stamped themselves as one of the greatest teams in John I Dent Cup history”, according to the opening paragraph of Chris Dutton’s report in The Canberra Times.

This has been provided as an excerpt from Blue Bloods by Matt Cleary - if you would like to purchase a copy of the book, click here