Champion Wallabies captain John Eales squared off against some of the toughest men on the planet during his playing career, but he has revealed his mother was the real source of his strength in a touching tribute after her death.
Rosa Eales passed away on October 31, aged 88, and Eales has penned a moving obituary for her.
Eales was one of the greatest to ever lace up the boots for the Wallabies and was the last Australian captain to taste Bledisloe Cup success against the Kiwis.
He played 86 Tests for the Wallabies from 1991 to 2001, serving as captain in 55 of them along with leading Australia to World Cup glory in 1999.
However, in a stunning revelation, Eales wrote that he did not want to play rugby as a child and had begged his mother to get him out of it while she was in hospital after giving birth to his sister Rosaleen.
John Eales is pictured with his mother Rosa in front of the statue erected in his honour at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane
‘The only games of rugby I had watched were between the Wallabies and the All Blacks and it all looked too rough for a kid that wasn’t very tough. On the way to Kenmore, we visited Rosa in the hospital,’ he wrote for News Corp.
‘Knowing that contact sport wasn’t her thing either, I waited until Jack left the room before seizing the moment.
‘Mum, Dad is taking me to play rugby, and I don’t want to play,’ I said. ‘You have GOT to get me out of it.’
She replied: ‘John, I’m sorry, there’s not much I can do from here. Go with Dad today and we can speak about it afterwards.’
Fortunately for the Eales family – and Australian rugby – John did go to that match and began what would become a glittering career at Ashgrove Emus [later GPS Juniors].
Eales was a two-time World Cup-winning Wallabies star during his playing days
Rosa, though, was a much tougher sell. She would only attend two games of rugby that John played before he became a Wallaby.
She attended an under-10s grand final that Eales and his teammates lost, and another match that involved an all-in brawl.
Even when Eales started playing club rugby she was always a mother first and a footy supporter second.
‘At 5am one September morning in 1990, I arrived home after winning the Rothman’s Medal in the Brisbane Club Rugby competition,’ Eales recalled.
‘After stepping in the front door mum berated me as I took the walk of shame through the foyer and down the stairs.
‘Turning the corner towards my room, she dialled down her rousing: “Oh, and by the way, congratulations love!”. Mothers never really clock off.’
By the time Eales had started his international career, Rosa was finally converted and would watch every match with her rugby circle.
‘If proof was ever required that Rosa was a convert, she would occasionally fetch balls for me when I would do some extra kicking practice on the West Mitchelton rugby league oval near our home,’ Eales wrote.
‘But it wasn’t just me. Rosa helped everyone, and everyone that met her was struck by the strength of her goodness and gentle humility.
‘She, of course, wouldn’t dare believe that she had anything to teach anyone, which is exactly why she had so much to teach everyone.
‘She rarely preached but regularly practiced, and if her practice was love, her signature was kindness.’
Life was often challenging with six siblings living on the salary of one school teacher, but that became outright tragedy when they lost one of their own.
‘The two toughest moments of Rosa’s adult life were bearing the enormous weight of the loss of her daughter, Carmel, to Hodgkins’s lymphoma at the age of 20, and her husband, Jack, almost 20 years ago, to melanoma,’ Eales wrote.
‘It was her faith; in Catholicism, in herself, and in her family, that pulled her through.
‘Rosa departed this world at 88 years of age on October 31, and her legacy lives on through her five children, their partners, and her 14 grandchildren.
‘I am convinced that a large part of the art of dying lies in the dignity of letting go. Not giving up, because Rosa never did that – she fought the good fight.
‘But at the end, when she faced into the inevitable, she let go with clarity, peace, dignity, and contentment. If there is beauty in death, this was it.’
