Eighty years ago, 26 British rugby league players embarked on an extraordinary five-month tour of Australia and New Zealand that would earn them a unique place in the game’s history. A new book looks back at the remarkable story of the Indomitables, ensuring their achievements will never be forgotten.

RUGBY LEAGUE has never shied away from innovation – often being among those leading the field in that respect.

Right from the birth of the game, when 22 northern English clubs met up in Huddersfield’s George Hotel and agreed to break away from the Rugby Football Union to eventually develop the sport as we know it today, rugby league has always tried new things to make the game better, faster and safer for players to be involved in.

But perhaps one of the biggest moments of innovation came not from a rule change, but from a very special group of players.

A group of players who should never be forgotten, and now, because of a new book about them, will never be forgotten – The Indomitables.

In 1946, just months after the Second World War ended, 15 English and 11 Welsh players set sail on Navy aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable to undertake a huge five-month tour of Australia and New Zealand that involved 27 games, including a three-match Ashes series against the Kangaroos and seven games in New Zealand.

Captained by Gus Risman, the Lions, who were the first touring rugby side to use that name (the rugby union Lions didn’t enjoy their first tour until 1950), claimed 21 victories and a draw, which came in the first Ashes Test.

The squad went on to beat Australia in the final two Tests to claim the Ashes trophy, and to this day, 80 years on, they remain the only Great Britain team to be unbeaten in a Test series against Australia in Australia.

But this tour was about much more than the action on the field, which the book – The Indomitables: Rugby League’s Greatest Tour by Martin Whitcombe and Huw Richards – perfectly points out.

“The 1946 Lions tour was unique in world sport,” explains rugby league historian Tony Collins, who knows how important this book is to the game’s story.

“It took place barely eight months after World War Two had ended, when rationing and austerity were still part of everyday life in Britain. To undertake a trip of 14,000 miles across a world scarred by war and devastation was something no other sport dared do.

“Once the Lions arrived in Australia, their struggles did not end. But as they travelled across the country to play matches, they were greeted as heroes and showered with gifts. It was in 1946 that the deeply shared culture of rugby league in Britain, Australia and New Zealand was illustrated in the brightest possible way.

“Before the age of TV contracts, tours were the biggest sources of income for the game’s governing bodies. Nowadays, the game is financed by TV companies and there is no need for months-long tours of 20 to 30 matches. And of course, today our top players are all full-time professionals, so the line-up of the 1946 Lions composed of miners, factory workers, shipbuilders, teachers, etc., will never be repeated.

“We can’t go back to those days, but it is our responsibility to ensure that the memory of the people who built our sport, often at great personal risk, is kept alive, and for me, this is the best book about any rugby tour anywhere.”

The story of the Indomitables is one many fans of the game will know the basic details of, but even some of those with stronger links to that mammoth tour have received an education thanks to Whitcombe and Richards’ nine-year research project to bring the true story of that epic tour to life.

One of the Welshmen that played a big part in that tour was Bradford Bulls great Trevor Foster. Injury prevented him from playing any part in the games against Australia, but he did feature in numerous other matches.

And for his son Simon, knowing his exploits have been documented in such a way for future generations to enjoy is a very special thing indeed.

“There were many great bedtime stories my dad would tell my three sisters and me about his extraordinary adventure on the ‘Indomitables’ tour, and those memories have been stirred once again by reading this book,” said Simon.

“Some of the content in the book I have never heard about before, and it brings a completely fresh perspective to what I knew of the tour by featuring more about the Australians’ experience of it.

“The book has been a work in progress for some time but has been worth the wait.

“It will most certainly become a genuine rugby league historical document and be a major part of our informing the next generation about our rich sporting history and heritage. I honestly feel it will become that important.

“It is such an important part of my own family history as well and I am now embroiled in the new knowledge I have gained after reading it. There is so much more of our heritage to reflect upon.

“It genuinely makes me and my wider family, particularly those living down in South Wales, feel very proud. Particularly because Trevor was quite a humble gentleman, who would never ever boast about his rugby league career. He just loved to entertain us all with his funny stories, always told with sincerity and a youthful enthusiasm.”

It was perhaps that youthful enthusiasm that made Foster Senior so well respected Down Under after that tour.

“After my dad’s passing in 2005, I received a call from the parish priest of a church in Sydney where he had attended Mass while in the city. The priest was a keen rugby league follower and historian, and he asked if I would kindly allow some of my dad’s ashes to be scattered on the Sydney Cricket Ground, which was very close to that church.

“Trevor had made such a big impression when staying in the area, coaching young kids and talking with parishioners, with several people recording written comments in the parish diary about him.

“Luckily Mike ‘Stevo’ Stephenson was living in Sydney for six months of the year at the time and carefully transported a small flask with some of Trevor’s ashes directly to the priest on his next visit to Australia.”

Co-author Whitcombe also has special links to the story, with his grandfather Frank, another of the Welshmen on the trip, providing the ultimate inspiration for his latest project.

“After publishing my first book – The Indomitable Frank Whitcombe – rugby supporters and family friends asked me for more details about this historic 1946 tour and I soon realised that a dedicated book about it would not only generate a lot of interest, but also prove a vital way to keep the players’ achievements alive,” explained Martin.

“Writing a book like this is a unique journey. The research begins with basic information and simple pen portraits of the team. However, once you dive into personal archives and read through family scrapbooks, the players truly come alive. You get to know their characters and personalities in a way that would usually be impossible.

“Even though Frank passed away before I was born, spending all those years researching him and his teammates made me feel as if I knew him personally, which I enjoyed, and along the way, many things I thought were facts turned out to be folklore, while entirely new discoveries came to light.”

And in a poignant twist to the tale, it turns out the book has not just been about telling the story; in one case it has brought history to life again – as Martin explains.

“At the start of the process I wanted to contact Pat Devery, who was part of the Australian team defeated by the tourists.

“I traced him and spoke to his wife Dolores, who told me I was probably two or three years too late as Pat was suffering from advanced dementia.

“But I sent them some photos and footage from the series anyway and a few weeks later Dolores called me back and said: ‘Every night Pat’s been telling me different things about the Ashes series against England.’

“The historical footage had pierced the fog of the disease and, with Dolores acting as his scribe, the rugby icon successfully composed the book’s foreword.

“The book is now dedicated in part to Devery, honouring the man whose love for the game proved more powerful than dementia.”

AN AUTHOR’S VIEW

Huw Richards on why this is a story that needed to be told.

A tour reunion, bringing together surviving players on major anniversaries, is among the time-honoured traditions of both rugby codes, but it does not usually outlive the last participants.

That Joe Egan, last of the 1946 Indomitables, died in November 2012 but second, third and even fourth-generation descendants have since marked the 70th and 80th anniversaries is one more reason for reckoning them the most memorable of all rugby league touring teams.

Martin Whitcombe, part of that family connection as grandson of tourist Frank Whitcombe, initiated The Indomitables: Rugby League’s Greatest Tour. He assembled the remarkable photographs and, by contacting Australia half-back Pat Devery, who lived until 2017, found not only first-hand memories but a moving example of sporting reminiscence providing relief from Alzheimer’s.

As co-writer, my editing job evolved rapidly into a fascinating research project. If either of us ever had any doubts about the project, they were wholly dispelled by that 80th anniversary event, which showed both continuing support from relatives and serious interest in the wider league community.

To dig into rugby league in 1946 is to find what looks, 80 years on, like a world turned upside down. Instead of our current monopolar world, the years after the Second World War featured four major powers – Australia, France, New Zealand and England/Great Britain – each of whom could, and did, beat any of the others.

The Ashes, with full-length tours on a four-year home-and-away cycle, were the peak of the game. They had been in British hands since 1920, but with every series tightly contested – most finished 2-1 – rather than the blowouts of our times.

Australia was the supplicant, mobilising Foreign Minister Bert Evatt to persuade a reluctant Rugby League Council to tour immediately. And England v Wales was 1946’s State of Origin, the best rugby below Test level.

As well as recounting the tour, chronicled at the time by Eddie Waring’s lively travelogue and in 2009 by Colin Thomson, we aimed to place it in a wider context. So the tour account is flanked by sections on the Ashes tradition, rugby league in wartime, the selection process, Australia and New Zealand in 1946, the subsequent lives of everyone who toured, just missed selection or played against them, and their longer-term impact. We also wanted to do justice to New Zealand, too often disregarded.

We had sources not available to our predecessors. These included the British Newspaper Archive, its comprehensive, free and aptly-named Australian counterpart Trove, and the databases of the revived Rugby League Record Keepers and the Rugby League Project, along with tour vice-captain Tom McCue’s scrapbooks and Joe Egan’s joyously laconic, previously unpublished, diary.

Some cherished stories, like half-backs Dai Jenkins and Willie Davies calling moves in Welsh until Newcastle skipper Viv Madge told them: “Don’t bother boys, I’m from Swansea too”, we owe to Eddie. But others came from our newer sources. 

There was the dinner which ended in disorder after a British journalist lectured the Australian press on professional ethics. We identified the Aussie journo complained of, but not named, by Gus Risman in his memoirs in 1958 and McCue in 1967, and found that the wrong player has been reckoned Australia’s oldest debutant for 80 years. Martin’s military expertise and contact with other Indomitable families gave us Ike Owens’ remarkable war record.

There has never been a better time to be a rugby league historian. As well as those newer sources, we could draw both information and inspiration from the work of Tony Collins – an unfailingly generous source of advice, in particular on the vexed matter of Roy Francis’s non-selection – other historians like Robert Gate, Ryan Bodman and Mike Gardner, and Carolyn Hitt’s Codebreakers documentary.

But you still need a story to tell – and the tale of the team who came out of the war, went to Australasia on an aircraft carrier which gave them the perfect name, found this the least of their travelling privations, withstood everything Australia could throw at them and did it all for working men’s pay, remains perhaps the best in rugby league’s rich history.

First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 524 (September 2026)