It was described in the immediate aftermath as “the most vicious assault we have seen in a game of rugby since it went professional". Those were the words of Lions team manager Donal Lenihan, and he wasn't wrong.
When Waratahs player Duncan McRae violently assaulted Lions outside-half Ronan O'Gara at the Sydney Football Stadium on June 23, 2001, viewers looked on in astonishment and disgust. They still do to this day.
Around 2 million people have watched the famous clip in its various guises on social media and YouTube over the years, with the ferocity of what happened still jarring. There, lying pinned to the ground as punches rain down on his face, O'Gara can do nothing but take a beating.
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There were unfounded accusations from the Australian side that McRae's violence was in retaliation for an elbow from O'Gara. Whatever the supposed spark, what then unfolded was unacceptable on any level. O'Gara was left with a significant facial injury as medics immediately tended to a deep laceration around his left eye.
Astonishingly, McRae was banned for just seven weeks. With the Australian season ending, it was effectively a zero-game ban.
You can watch the incident and aftermath here.
O’Gara revisited the episode in his autobiography, time having done little to quench his fury.
“We were attacking inside their 22, I passed to Woody (Keith Wood) and he took it up close to their 5-metre line. Two of their guys brought Woody down. One of them was Duncan McRae.
“As the ruck was forming I followed up and shoved him. Next thing I knew I was on the ground and McRae was pucking the head off me.
“After the first dig I thought it was going to stop any second but they kept coming. Nine. Ten. Eleven. A frenzy of digs. One after another after another. I just lay there and took it. It was the weirdest feeling. Lying there I felt totally lost. Like I was in a daze.
“Even though he was on top of me, I wasn’t pinned down. I tried to protect my face with my right arm and after a couple of seconds I grabbed the back of his jersey with my left. Useless. Pointless. Why? Why didn’t I try to push him off? Hit him. Something. Why did I just take it?”
“Two lacerations under my left eye needed eight stitches but the pain of that was nothing compared to the humiliation. Why didn’t I try to defend myself? In the dressing room I was f*****g raging. Raging with myself. Raging with McRae. When the game was over I wanted to go into their dressing room and have a cut off him.”
Last year, Mcrae spoke about what happened two decades ago during an appearance on Stan Sport show Between Two Posts.
“I don’t know what I was doing near a ruck, firstly, because I was never there, but he (O’Gara) sort of came to elbow me and I’ve just caught his elbow straight in my face,” said McRae.
“I thought ‘f**k you’, and the same thing happened 15 minutes later. I’ve got up and seen him at the last second – elbows me straight in the face.
“I’ve just caught him and I’ve swung him under and he sort of ended up on the ground right under me. I just said to him, ‘what the f…. are you going to do, champ?’ And he’s just kicked me straight in the nuts so I’ve just pinned him and the rest is history.”
An unsavoury episode then, perhaps summarised best by none other than Austin Healey.
"Duncan took exception to the fact that someone did something perfectly legal to him and decided to punch him 11 times in the face," said Healey.
“Cowardly would be the most appropriate way to sum it up."
