They celebrated in true Aussie style – with a few dressing room beers and a rousing rendition of John Williamson\u2019s Among the Gum Trees.<\/p>\n
Beer was flung around the jubilant away sheds inside the $1.6 billion Hill Dickinson Stadium in Liverpool as players clapped and sang the iconic song blaring from Josh Addo-Carr\u2019s ghetto blaster.<\/p>\n
It was superstar fullback Reece Walsh who called his players together for the sing-a-long huddle after Australia\u2019s 14-4 win.<\/p>\n
And it wasn\u2019t just the winning players \u2013 every person in the entire squad joined in was in the circle. This wasn\u2019t a team win, this was squad triumph.<\/p>\n
Even your humble columnist somehow found himself in the circle for a sing-along, as was ARL Commission chairman Peter V\u2019landys and Immortal Andrew Johns with players yelling: \u201cWhere\u2019s the eighth? (Immortal) … where\u2019s the eighth?\u201d<\/p>\n
Players also sang a Kangaroos victory song which has been sung in England for more than 40 years.<\/p>\n
Head coach Kevin Walters and game captain Harry Grant gave emotional victory speeches while Cam Munster handed V\u2019landys and NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo a beer each.<\/p>\n
This is what rugby league is all about.<\/p>\n
And the memorable moment came after a dramatic game which included three sin bins, four melees, brutal defence and a wild crowd baying for blood.<\/p>\n
The Kangaroos scored two tries in quick succession midway through the second half to record a fierce 10-point win before a sold-out crowd of 52,106 at the new home of Everton FC.<\/p>\n
Victory gives Australia an unbeatable 2-0 series lead with the third Test in Leeds now a dead-rubber.<\/p>\n
Inspired by the brilliance of Munster, Australia was resilient, tough and gritty to secure victory over a pumped-up English side spurred on by the local, vocal crowd.<\/p>\n
A wonderful scramble defensive effort was the cornerstone of Australia\u2019s win with the Kangaroos conceding just one try in the opening two Tests.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was an old-style Test match,\u201d said Kangaroos coach Kevin Walters. \u201cA lot of our guys haven\u2019t experienced that but now they have \u2013 it\u2019s one to put away in their book.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a lot of confidence in our defence. We turned over a fair bit of ball in that first half but defence wins big games. I just love winning, it feels great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Munster was delighted at the win but dirty at his side\u2019s error rate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to be defensively great because we were pretty pathetic with the ball in hand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEngland came out bashed us but we turned up for each other. It was definitely a team effort and we can play a lot better. Today the England crowd really got behind them and could feel the build-up.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were multiple flare-ups with Tino Fa\u2019asuamaleaui and Reece Walsh being sin-binned for Australia and Dom Young being banished for England.<\/p>\n
Munster and Hudson Young were Australia\u2019s second half try scorers after the scores were locked 4-all at halftime.<\/p>\n
Australian players embraced in elation at fulltime, relieved yet excited to have retained the Ashes.<\/p>\n
It was a wild-west start with a melee breaking out between hookers Harry and Jez Litten and then splitting into six separate groups.<\/p>\n
Every player on the field was involved with the fired-up crowd wanting blood before Fa\u2019asuamaleaui and Young were marched for ten minutes. It flared up again three minutes later with charged-up players going at it once again.<\/p>\n
A third scuffle erupted midway through the second half when Walsh collided with Young, who had already dropped the ball.<\/p>\n
But Walsh had made contact with Young mid-air and was sin-binned with fans giving it a red-hot farewell from the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you play a Test you know there will be a fair bit of emotion,\u201d said Grant. \u201cWe probably got caught up in it a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
A physical England ripped in early, determined to cast aside a meek performance in London. This was a Pommy side we haven\u2019t seen in years.<\/p>\n
The first half was loud, willing and brutal – international rugby league had come alive.<\/p>\n
It took 50 minutes for the first try when Munster did what Munster does. He dummied, held up a pass, fended and slid over amid claims of obstruction. He may not have scored a more important try.<\/p>\n
And when Hudson Young scored four minutes later after collecting a rebound from Nathan Cleary bomb and suddenly the Aussies had skipped out to a 14-4 lead, which was the fulltime score.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They celebrated in true Aussie style – with a few dressing room beers and a rousing rendition of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-256475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}