16
On tour in Hong Kong in September 1995, Australia’s ICC Sixes team – Glenn McGrath, Michael Slater, Greg Blewett, Brendon Julian, Matt Elliott and Matthew Hayden – passed the South African players as they headed out for a night on the town at the famous Nathan Road, once known as the Golden Mile. The ICC Sixes tournament began the following day and the South Africans were on a strict curfew and alcohol ban. McGrath couldn’t help thinking they looked envious as he and his mates clowned around as they waited for the lift and laughed about the possible nocturnal adventures that awaited them. Little could McGrath have imagined he would meet his soul mate that night.
Joe Bananas was reputed to be a good place to unwind, but when the Australians arrived it was loud and noisy, nothing like the oasis McGrath had hoped for. What made it different from any other pub he’d ever visited, however, was the attractive blonde English woman who was there with a group of her friends. McGrath left it to Julian – known as a charmer – to do the groundwork. The ‘hosties’ (for it turned out they were air stewards) were not only happy to chat, but they were celebrating the recent divorce of Jane Steele’s friend Karen.
McGrath’s first impression of Jane was one of joy and radiant beauty: ‘She was tall, blonde, bright-eyed, bubbly and always smiling. She was brighter than any of the millions of lights that turn Kowloon’s night into day. I was attracted to her and it was terrific that she didn’t have the slightest idea of cricket. We went to another nightclub that was meant to be good, but it was dingy with expensive drinks, seedy types propped up against the bar and trashy music. However, that didn’t seem to matter as Jane and I spoke. We could’ve been sitting in a Chinese laundry that night and it would’ve still been fun.’
Jane’s friends had chosen to go to Hong Kong to let their hair down at the island’s renowned nightspots. Virgin Airline’s Hong Kong legs were ‘two-nighters’ and the time difference between London and Kowloon is eight hours, so it made it perfect sense for Jane and her Virgin crew-mates to party out all night and sleep all day.
‘Sometimes we’d return to our hotel after a night out and we’d pass local children going to school,’ she laughs. ‘Our return flight was of an evening, so we’d be refreshed after sleeping all day and were able to deal with the demands of a 12-hour flight home.’
Jane almost didn’t go to Joe Bananas that fateful night; she was tired. In the end she capitulated to Karen’s persuasive charms, but she didn’t worry about washing her hair, doing her nails or dressing up. Little could she have known that fate had arranged for her to meet the man of her dreams at Joe Bananas that night.
One of the flight team, a practical joker named Graham, told Karen and Jane there were members of the Australian cricket team at the pub who were asking if they could meet them. Karen and Jane thought it was another of Graham’s jokes and nonchalantly told him to send the cricketers straight over. Jane couldn’t believe it when Graham gave the nod and over walked a group of six not-too-bad-looking blokes. Glenn, the tallest Aussie, was the last to introduce himself.
‘We started chatting away and I liked him,’ says Jane. ‘I told him I’d spent six weeks backpacking around the east coast of Australia, and he told me he came from a country town. In the back of my mind I thought it was a shame he lived so far away because, while he seemed nice, I thought we’d probably never see each other again. Before our evening ended we exchanged phone numbers and addresses and that was that.’
However, Jane left one impression before they said goodbye. She told McGrath and Brendon Julian her infamous watermelon joke, one that needs hand movements to be told properly. ‘The fact it wasn’t funny made it funny,’ says McGrath. ‘I also remember Jane turned bright-red after she said it. It is a bit risqué and I think she wondered why she’d told it.’
The next day the Australians lost their opening Sixes game to England – which came as no surprise because they’d been at a dance party until 4 am. Almost as punishment, McGrath and his team-mates then had to give a coaching clinic. While McGrath did his best to explain the benefits of bowling a good line and length, his thoughts were with Jane, the wonderful woman he’d met the night before.
‘I was sincere when I told Jane I’d keep in touch, but she went her way and I mine,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know if our paths would ever cross again.’
Jane returned to England just over a month after her ‘Honkers’ trip, feeling exhausted after an arduous flight from Miami. It had been a demanding shift and she was happy to be home in her cottage in a sleepy village in the Cotswolds, with the kettle boiling. Jane had sent a letter to Glenn three weeks earlier but had received no reply.
‘Pity,’ she thought. She poured a cup of Earl Grey tea, played her answering machine – and was ecstatic to hear an Australian accent. Jane replayed the message so often the tape threatened to wear out. She decided to wait a week to call McGrath back, not wanting to appear too keen.
Jane phoned McGrath from Tokyo. After a game of phone tag they spoke and made arrangements to meet in Perth, where he’d be playing a Test against Sri Lanka in December. Jane had no idea what that meant, but it sounded like an adventure. She bought the book The Rules and Regulations of Cricket, but never read a full page.
‘My dad wasn’t too impressed about me going across the other side of the world to meet with an Australian cricketer he’d never heard of,’ she says. ‘And I have to admit, I began to feel apprehensive about going all that way to catch up with someone I’d met for a few hours in Hong Kong. I wondered if I’d lost my marbles, but common sense had gone out the window ... I had no choice but to go.’
But there was no cricketer waiting for Jane at Perth international airport with a bunch of flowers. McGrath had been obliged to attend an afternoon team meeting to talk tactics. And when she arrived at the hotel and phoned his room, Jane was told to ‘c’mon up’. There was no offer to meet her in the foyer and help with her luggage. Miffed, Jane dragged her suitcase behind her and didn’t know what to expect when she knocked on McGrath’s door.
‘He was more handsome than I remembered – and I was glad to have made the journey,’ she confesses.
And McGrath was happy to see Jane. The reason he’d taken so long to get back to her after receiving her letter was simple: he’d been in the middle of what he called his ‘summer ritual’ – living out of a suitcase while he played cricket.
‘I was a single guy enjoying life, and as far as I was concerned, that was not going to change in a hurry. Cricket was my main focus. However, when I think back on Jane’s arrival to Perth – the airport, the suitcase – I can’t help but cringe. Rudeness wasn’t the reason I didn’t pick her up, we had a team meeting and no-one is excused from them. When I opened the door and saw Jane smiling nervously, I felt bad for not going down to the foyer to greet her. The good thing, though, was we didn’t miss a beat and picked up from when we met at Hong Kong. When Jane told me she had second thoughts about coming to Australia, I suggested she not worry about that and to see what happened. There was no need for pressure.’
Jane turned up at the WACA the following day at 2.30 pm. (She had no idea what time the match started and promised she’d get there earlier on the second day.) The Perth Test was the first game of cricket she had seen live – and while she thought McGrath looked athletic as he ran in to ‘throw’ the ball towards the batsman, she was struck more by a sudden understanding of why people felt the urge to streak at the cricket, seduced by the sun, blue sky and lush green grass. ‘When Jane told me that at dinner, I couldn’t stop smiling,’ says McGrath.
Australia won the Test – McGrath took seven wickets – and they flew to Sydney to stay at his bachelor pad by the ocean at Cronulla. Jane fell in love with the area the locals called the Shire.
Their week together ended all too quickly and Jane left the Aussie summer for the cold bite of the northern hemisphere winter. McGrath was happy to have found Jane Steele was everything he’d believed her to be that first night in Hong Kong: happy-go-lucky, uncomplicated and very caring. They promised to keep in touch, but as Jane cleared customs she had her doubts: ‘I got the distinct impression I wasn’t the only woman in his life. I also thought he liked being single.’
Regardless, the pair kept in touch, racking up expensive phone calls so they could share each other’s daily existence and writing letters. Glenn quickly learned to recognise Jane’s distinctive handwriting.
McGrath then asked Jane to come to Australia for a month or two in April 1996. When she arrived in Sydney he was at the airport, although he was much the worse for wear, having been part of Sutherland’s first grand final victory. He had been named Man of the Match after tearing through Bankstown, which boasted the Waugh brothers.
While Jane was in Australia they visited a remote resort at Bloomfield, on the fringe of the ancient rainforests near Cairns in far north Queensland. According to McGrath, Bloomfield was like the Garden of Eden, and amid the sweet scent of the tropical flowers they enjoyed long, romantic strolls; spent time alone on the beach; watched the sun set; enjoyed a champagne picnic on the rocks; sat on the Coral Sea floor during a scuba diving lesson; and even danced beneath the moonlight. It was perfect – until an elderly couple asked if Glenn and Jane were an item.
‘Without thinking, I said we were just friends,’ McGrath recalls with a grimace. ‘Good friends, but just friends. It didn’t go down very well – trouble in paradise...’
‘An older couple asked if we were boyfriend and girlfriend,’ says Jane. ‘And when Glenn replied – quick as a flash, mind you – that I was just a friend from England and we were having a quick break, I felt gutted. It felt as if I was being passed off as his latest tart to two strangers. I didn’t know whether to crawl into a hole or smack him across the face. I had begun to fall for him but if I could have flown home straight away, I would have.’
Luckily the tropical heat quickly thawed the ice that McGrath’s remark had caused and the couple were able to enjoy the rest of their time together. Although Jane does still tease him about his insensitivity at Bloomfield.
‘I was stupid. I never introduced her as just a friend ever again,’ says McGrath solemnly.
Jane was soon to receive another lesson about McGrath. While she realised he played top-level cricket, she had no inkling of how famous her beau was in Australia until the night they went to friends Bev and Darren Mitchell’s place for a barbecue. It was a pleasant night and Jane enjoyed mingling with the other guests.
But then Bev asked Jane a question that caught her off-guard: ‘So, what’s it like going out with Glenn McGrath?’ When Jane asked her what she meant, Bev replied: ‘You know, with him being a superstar and all.’
‘What, like Ryan Giggs from Manchester United?’ Jane retorted.
‘Who’s he?’ Bev asked.
‘Exactly,’ said Jane. ‘He’s a great footballer but you haven’t heard of him.’
‘But Jane, Glenn’s as famous as Robert De Niro!’
Her new friend’s revelation made Jane’s jaw drop in shock.
But it did help to explain why every second person greeted McGrath with ‘Glenn, mate’, ‘G’day Glenn’ and even ‘Ooh aah’ whenever they went out. Until that moment, Jane had just assumed McGrath was a very popular bloke who knew a lot of people.
‘I felt like a bit of a fool and took him aside to ask what it was all about,’ says Jane. ‘What I discovered from that was Glenn was just a down-to-earth, modest person who didn’t brag about his achievements to impress people. I liked the fact he didn’t tell people he was one of the world’s best fast bowlers, if not the best. I loved that.’
As for McGrath, the fact Jane didn’t know him as Glenn McGrath the cricketer but as Glenn McGrath the person – and she still liked him – was special. He began to dread the day she would return to England. Their two months together had gone too quickly.
When the time came for Jane to leave, both were misty-eyed at Mascot airport. Jane refrained from telling McGrath she loved him because it seemed too early to say that. Before she left, McGrath looked her in the eye and her heart melted when he said, ‘Jane, this isn’t the end, you know, it’s just the beginning...’
For Jane, being back in England – separated by 20,000 kilometres from the man she’d fallen for – was painful. He was always on her mind and, as she says, ‘it was doing my head in’. She put herself under enormous pressure trying to rearrange her schedule so she’d be assigned to flights bound for Down Under.
When Glenn finally told Jane during one of their marathon telephone conversations that he loved her, she dropped her guard and spoke from the heart. While his declaration made her happy, it didn’t change the fact they were still separated by vast distances, and that broke her heart. So when they next met up in Sydney, Jane told McGrath their relationship had to end – because trying to find ways to be with him was tearing her apart.
McGrath was shocked, but he had a plan.
‘It was the night before Jane returned to England – maybe for good, this time – and it was far from the happy time we were used to,’ he recalls. ‘It was pretty sombre and whenever we tried to be cheerful, it hit us she’d be leaving tomorrow. I was cut up. The image I’d built up of myself as a free-spirited bloke had crumbled quickly. I think it is fair to say up until that point I’d had the upper hand in our relationship, but I gave that up freely and willingly when everything was placed under a threat. I’d never been as serious about anything before when I asked Jane to move to Australia and be with me. She didn’t answer straight away. Jane needed all of ten seconds to make her mind up.’
But life as the much-loved partner of an international cricketer wasn’t quite what Jane had imagined. When she returned to Sydney, Glenn was in Sri Lanka and still three days away from returning. After being together for three weeks he was off again, this time to India, and there were other trips on the horizon.
‘I realised I’d made a mistake having Jane come to Australia for two months during our off-season, because she may have gained the impression I just played a few games of cricket in summer and had plenty of time on my hands in between,’ he says.
The reality of the life of a cricket widow was a shock for Jane. Watching the other players and their partners embrace as they said teary farewells only added to her distress – and it didn’t help to hear that the farewells only got harder.
One day after the players had departed, Jane sat with Sue Porter (Mark Waugh’s then fiancée) and her daughter Lauren, Tracy Bevan and Lynette Waugh, and made some firm and empathetic friendships over a cappuccino.
Glenn and Jane were in love. Nothing – so they thought – could ever hamper that, but the Department of Immigration’s red tape provided an immediate reality check. Jane needed permanent residency. After failing to secure it for her, McGrath sought out anyone he thought might be able to help. He was offended that the Department considered Jane as just one more ‘candidate for immigration’. She was the love of his life! But try as he might, he couldn’t explain to the public servants the significance of that. They didn’t seem to comprehend.
‘It was frustrating,’ he says, shaking his head at the memory of filling out form after form. ‘I have to admit I was worried she might not get the residency because of how tough it was. We showed the correspondence we shared (and it was personal) – Christmas cards, newspaper articles on our relationship and how much we love one another – to prove we were being honest, but there was no certainty her passport would get the rubber stamp. So, there was lots of trepidation, though there was one bright spot. They gave Jane permission to travel to England when we headed over for the 1997 Ashes tour.’
But as it turned out, England became the place where the happy couple would begin a battle beyond their imagining, one that would make their dealings with Australia’s Department of Immigration seem easy.