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A Game for the Ages
A Game for the Ages is a 43-minute documentary that records the oral history of a glorious episode in Australian sport. The Australian rugby team, the Wallabies, defeated South Africa’s Springboks 11-9 at Ellis Park in Johannesburg in 1963. This was Australia’s first success at the high-altitude venue and no Wallaby team has won there since.
Mike Jenkinson, a member of the 1963 Wallaby touring squad, was in the grandstand to witness A Game for the Ages, when his teammates became the first overseas team since 1896 to win two consecutive Tests against the world champion Springboks.
He and Robert Heazlewood interviewed 12 of the 13 surviving players from the Ellis Park XV, as well as several members of the wider touring squad and current Wallaby Benn Robinson. Two members of the 1963 squad made original ‘home-movie’ footage available for the production.
Original film coverage of the match – which preceded South African TV – was sourced through the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
A Game for the Ages tells how a group of unheralded young Australians (average age less than 24) engineered the defeat of the world champion Springboks in their traditional rugby fortress. It is an epic.