While he was named Australian coach, Terry Fearnley had also been appointed as New South Wales
State of Origin coach in
1985. After losing the single Origin games played in
1980 and
1981, as well as the
1982,
1983 and
1984 Origin series, the once dominant Blues won their first ever Origin series in
1985 after winning games 1 and 2. In what was to prove a case of bad planning, the test series and the tour of NZ were scheduled to take place between games 2 and 3 of the Origin series. Rumours soon surfaced that Fearnley and Lewis did not get along on tour. Lewis later confirmed this by admitting in television interviews that the pair hated each other while Fearnley openly admitted that in light of the circumstances he could have done a better job in bringing the team together (Steve Mortimer, who had formed a close friendship with Lewis since they first teamed together in the Australian halves in 1981 and were room mates on the
1982 Kangaroo tour, later also said that he regretted his decision not to tour as he believed his relationships with both of them could have acted as a bridge and eased the tension). Wally Lewis also publicly stated that he believed Fearnley openly favoured vice-captain Wayne Pearce, as well as the rest of the Kangaroos who were from his NSW team. At one point before the third test in
Auckland, Lewis claimed to have caught Fearnley and Pearce going over team selection in Fearnley's hotel room, something strongly denied by the pair. Fearnley himself created controversy on the tour. In the book
King Wally which was published in 1987, Wally Lewis claimed that Fearnley had said of team member
Michael O'Connor, a NSW player, ''"Can't play, no heart. Lucky he can kick goals or he wouldn't be here"'' (a former
Wallabies rugby union international, O'Connor was the only player not to play a test on the tour). The publishing of this story led to some animosity over the coming years between Lewis and O'Connor despite them being regular Test team mates until the end of 1989. But the biggest controversy came from the team selection for the third test. Fearnley dropped five players from the second test win, four of them Queenslanders (
Chris Close,
Mark Murray,
Greg Dowling and Greg Conescu - Close and Dowling dropped to the bench.
Noel Cleal who played from the bench in the 2nd Test was the only NSW player dropped), which caused all hell to break loose and prompted
Queensland Rugby League Chairman,
Federal Senator Ron McAuliffe, to publicly condemn the dropping of the four Queensland players from a winning Test side, saying
"Its a football assassination and beyond all reasoning. And there can be no reasonable excuse for it". With the replacement players in place (
Steve Ella,
Des Hasler,
Peter Tunks and
Benny Elias), the disjointed Kangaroos would go on to lose the third test 18–0, the first time they had been held scoreless since losing 19–0 to Great Britain in the 3rd Ashes series Test of the
1956–57 Kangaroo tour. Such was the animosity in the group between the NSW and Qld players that according to second row forward Paul "Fatty" Vautin (one of 4 Queensland players who retained their spot in the starting XIII) in his book
Fatty: The Strife and Times of Paul Vautin, two of the dropped players Mark Murray and Greg Conescu, acted as the Australian teams statisticians for the game and that both recorded a number of errors that were actually made by team mates to the players who directly replaced them in the side, Hasler and Elias. Terry Fearnley stepped down as Australian coach following the tour. He would be replaced in 1986 by 1956–57 Kangaroo tourist and
Canberra Raiders head coach
Don Furner. As a result of the problems during the tour, the Australian Rugby League made a number of decisions for future Australian teams, including: • No current State of Origin coach can also be the current Australian coach. • Mid-season Test series or single Tests will only take place before or after the Origin series and not during one to avoid bringing the NSW vs Qld rivalry into the Australian team. ==Touring squad==