By Nick Campton of ABC
Paul Vautin and Trevor Gillmeister. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Trevor Gillmeister knows how to spin a yarn better than most but he promises this one is true and that makes sense because when it comes to Queensland's 1995 State of Origin victory there's rarely a need to put any mustard on things.
"When I walk down the street in Brisbane in the city or somewhere, usually near Caxton Street and especially this time of year, someone driving past will wind down their window and yell out 'Gilly, 95, how good?' and drive off," Gillmeister said.
"That'll happen 40 or 50 times through this series, no worries. It's good to see the people remember what happened. That means a lot."
There's not many things in rugby league that inspire the love of strangers three decades on, but when it comes to Queensland and 1995 there are no strangers. It's something people share together, even if they've never met.
This week marks 30 years since Paul Vautin's side, the so-called 'Neville Nobodies', pulled off the biggest upset in Origin history and all the old tales are being told again.
The best ones are so well known in Queensland, you'd swear they teach them in schools.
Like the moment Wayne Bennett stands down as coach before the series and Vautin is pulled off the set of The Footy Show to lead his state when nobody else could, with a host of Queensland stars missing after signing with the breakaway Super League competition.
Vautin likes to say he got the call from QRL chairman Ross Livermore midway through filming a skit and had to wipe the lipstick off his mouth to answer the phone. He rang Gillmeister to tell him he was coach and Gillmeister thought it was a joke until Vautin said he had an even funnier one - that the hard-hitting veteran would be captain.
Or when Vautin and team manager Chris Close shooed an 18-year-old away from the team hotel, only for him to sheepishly reply his name was Ben Ikin and he was actually in the team after playing just four first-grade games.
Vautin wasn't alone in his unfamiliarity - Ikin's own father rang him when the team was announced, shocked that there could be two men named Ben Ikin who both played at the Gold Coast.
Or the image of Billy Moore roaring "Queenslander" like a maroon berserker as the team went down the tunnel for Game I in Sydney as the visitors pulled off a 2-0 ambush that might be the most beautifully ugly win in rugby league history.
There's the all-in brawl in Melbourne, where Queensland won the fight and the series, and Gillmeister himself defying doctor's orders to play Game III with a blood infection. It could have killed him, but he couldn't dream of a better place to die than Lang Park.
They won again that night - Ikin scored the final try and Gillmeister was chaired from the field driven straight back to hospital.
Those are the big hitters, the ones that get a run in the documentary series, the TV spots and the written profiles.
They get told at the sportsman's lunches, the reunions, the pre-match functions and in the front bars. They never get old but there's always more because this is the gift that keeps on giving, the story that never ends, the series that lives forever.
Putting together a team
Craig Teevan, who was playing with South Queensland Crushers at the time and came off the bench in all three matches, has one yarn he likes to tell about the moment he found out he'd be playing.
"Nobody knew if they'd pick the Super League players and back then they announced the team live on Channel Nine," Teevan said.
"After Crushers training I had a beer with Gilly and Bobby Lindner, if they knew about the team they didn't let on. I was on the lounge with the wife watching the news, they got a few names in and it looked like they weren't going with the Super League players.
"When they said it was Rowdy [Dale Shearer] and Adrian Lam in the halves I thought I might be a chance somewhere, until they called out 'number 14, Ben Ikin' and I didn't know who Ben Ikin was.
"I said 'shit, I missed out here' to the wife, then they get to the rest of the bench - Terry Cook, Mark Hohn and number 17, Craig Teevan.
"I jumped off the lounge and the phone started ringing. Ray Hadley was first but, I would have answered 20 phone calls before I even had a chance to ring my parents. It was a fantastic moment, to see a dream come true."
Gillmeister's favourite part came before it all happened, right at the start of the series when it was still sinking in that Queensland would be heading out there without players like Allan Langer, the Walters brothers, Steve Renouf, Gorden Tallis and Darren Smith.
It meant they had to get creative just to get a team on the park. Halfback Adrian Lam got special dispensation to play after representing Papua New Guinea the year before. Vautin reckoned PNG was connected to Queensland a couple of million years ago, so that was good enough.
Hooker Wayne Bartrim was born in Hat Head, New South Wales, and played his junior footy in Kempsey, but he'd spent some time playing in the Gold Coast A-grade competition as a teenager so he was in as well.
Broncos prop Gavin Allen got selected straight out of reserve grade. Ikin was the most unheralded pick but only just ahead of Cook, who was originally going to spend the season with bush footy club Atherton before a Crushers signing fell through shortly before the season started and he got their last roster spot.
Cook and Teevan played their only Origin games in the 1995 series.
Queensland still had some players with Origin pedigree, like Gillmeister and Moore and Gary Larson, and New South Wales were missing Super League stars of their own. But each of the Queenslanders still remember that the Blues had 11 internationals for that first game to Queensland's one.
The unheralded Queenslanders had grown up with Origin and the nine debutants were about to live it. The moment they learned what that meant is what Gillmeister treasures most.
"Maybe my favourite memory is that first team meeting. Fatty spoke, as did the late, great Dick 'Tosser' Turner [the team manager], I had to say something and then Choppy [Close] got up and got all emotional," Gillmeister said.
"Fatty asked what it meant to him to play in the first ever Queensland Origin team, because we had nine debutants and they had to hear what it was like.
"He started tearing up and Robbie O'Davis, who was sitting beside me, jumped up and said 'give me a jersey, I'll play them now'.
"The hairs on my arms stand up when I think about it - there's a thousand great memories but that one stands out. I think about it all the time."
Each of the Queenslanders swear that after that meeting they knew they were going to win. Their eventual victory was a surprise to everyone but themselves.
Vautin stressed the importance of what they were doing, how Origin would reveal what lay in their hearts and souls, that they were worthy of this because their time had come and how they'd become part of something bigger than themselves. But never in a way that heaped the pressure on.
"I don't know what gets the best out of people, but I do know you have to have that desire and will," Gillmeister said.
"It has to be in you. If someone else has to put it into you, you're in trouble. It was in us and Fatty knew how to bring it out."
In the midst of the Super League war, where the only thing cheaper than money was a broken word, Queensland's triumph was a reminder of the best parts of rugby league. Even the Maroons greatest foes could see it.
New South Wales coach Phil Gould, who hated losing like poison, recognised the significance enough that he addressed the Queensland side after they won the series in Game II and congratulated them on what they'd just achieved.
But the lasting effects are even greater and continue to this day in ways far greater than the blokes yelling out of their car windows at Gillmeister. Like all folk heroes, the 1995 Maroons are revered because Queensland sees so much of themselves in them.
"I remember when I first finished playing footy a few years later. I went up north to see some relatives. I took my boat, made a whole trip of it, met a lot of people and all they wanted to talk about was Origin," Gillmeister said.
"All they wanted to hear about was '95. They were farmers, small business owners and 1995 meant so much to them.
"It resonated, because we were battlers ourselves and Queenslanders are battlers nine times out of ten.
"We have fires, floods, cyclones, everything but we all just get on with it. There's no kicking cans, we just go and do it.
"That was the basis of our team, to just get the job done and it didn't matter what happened along the way. Just work hard for each other and it'll be alright."
'If it wasn't so good it would be a cult'
It's almost impossible to imagine rugby league without State of Origin, but it's worth remembering that in 1995 it was only 15 years old.
Predictions of Origin's demise pre-date the concept itself. Plenty of prominent voices in the game were on the record before the first match in 1980 saying with certainty that it was doomed to fail.
They were proven wrong as the concept took rugby league by storm and today it's the biggest spectacle the game has to offer.
But in 1995, with New South Wales coming off three straight series wins and the very heart of the game in jeopardy due to Super League, the future of Origin was far from assured.
Back then, even as old days weren't so old, the physical links to them were fading. The series opener was the first time Queensland had played a match without someone who appeared in the inaugural game in 1980 and Gillmeister was only the fourth captain the state had ever had.
The traditions were younger and the legends were newer and it's why 1995 is not just another Queensland triumph but perhaps the great Queensland triumph, the one from which all future wins are measured.
It is proof that what makes Origin, and specifically what makes Queensland, can be renewed and remade for a new generation, that it can be passed down through the ages.
While we think of the fabled Queensland spirit as being fixed and eternal like the Sun rising, it's not and never has been.
Every player who pulls on the jersey has to discover it within themselves when the time comes, and they have to pass it down to whoever follows.
It's not a well from which anyone can draw but a chain where new links have to be forged to tie past with present.
It can't be summoned through words but must be created through action. It is not a magic charm that saves you because there is no fate in Origin but what you can make for yourself. It is a call that must be answered. It is a responsibility.
It's far from foolproof, even for the Queenslanders who know it so intimately, even for the veterans of 1995. The very next year, with Super League players back in the fold for both sides and Vautin coaching again, New South Wales won the series with a clean sweep of their own.
But when Queensland have needed it most, like in that first game back in 1980 or in 1995 when the future of the concept felt in the balance, they always seem to find it as it allows them to rise again, harder and stronger. For the many victories they've had in the 30 years since, they might never need it so much again.
That series is the moment of renewal for that spirit, when the Maroons were able to bring it from the past into the present at their most desperate hour, and it's a gift they've been giving back to their state ever since.
"You have to honour your past and then it's up to you to bring it to the future. Choppy played in the first game in 1980 and he gave it to us. We gave it to the teams that came after us," Gillmeister said.
"I was lucky enough to give Mal a bit of a hand as part of the staff when the team went on that great run [winning 11 of 12 series from 2006-17] and Mal used to show some clips from '95 to the current blokes.
"They're all superstars and they asked how the hell we did it.
"But you can't explain it sometimes, it's ingrained into you. As kids we get brainwashed into it - if it wasn't so good it'd be a cult."
Glory days never pass them by
Because there is no Queensland team more beloved, the celebration and the commemoration of the 1995 side started early this year and shows no signs of slowing down.
There was an official reunion in February, with every player from the series except for Lam (who was coaching in England) and Brett Dallas attending. They are older now, and the time that made them heroes was long ago. Things have changed, but not too much. They are still Fatty's miracle Maroons.
Vautin addressed the team, just like he did that first day back in 1995 and he told them the same thing he did then - that they were part of something bigger than themselves, and they had done it proud. There was a public lunch, then they went into a private room at the Caxton Hotel, locked the doors and wallowed in the memories.
"It was great at the time, but now that I'm a bit older and wiser and mature, 30 years on we're still getting celebrated and so many people point to 1995 as the series that means the most to them," Teevan said.
"That'll go down in history, forever.
"At the reunion Fatty reminded us we were part of something special and to never forget it and when I look back at it now I'm even prouder than I was back in '95.
"You might see 50 per cent of the team around, but that might only be every year or second year. Matt Sing was my roommate, I reckon I'd only seen him twice in 30 years, but the yarns started up straight away, like we'd seen each other the day before.
"It made you remember what we did, what we got up too and what made us such a special group."
There will be another function at Lang Park the day before Origin I. The Former Origin Greats, Queensland's old boys' group, will be running it but there will be a special focus on the 1995 side.
There's also been long lunches, after-dinner speeches, hacks calling them up to plum their memories for fresh anecdotes and all the rest.
They're a team in demand around this time and especially this year. They'll be telling the stories of 1995 for the rest of their lives and that's exactly how Gillmeister wants it because it's proof glory days really can last forever.
"It always puts a smile on my face, whenever someone brings it up. The 30 years makes me feel old but I never get tired of it," Gillmeister said.
"To be part of that history, which means so much to the Queensland teams who went on in the future, who could get tired of that?
"You'd re-live it every year if we could, even if it'd put us in early graves. I never laughed so much in my life as I did in that camp - football is a game and you're meant to enjoy it and we did and still do.
"Don't tell my missus, but it was the best time of my life."
-ABC
