The 1994 French rugby league Oceania tour was a three test tour by the France national rugby league team. The French team played single tests against Papua New Guinea, Australia and Fiji, losing all three games.
Contents
Team
The French were coached by Jean-Christophe Vergeynst and captained by Patrick Entat.
Australia vs France
In the French team's first test in Australia since 1990 and in what would prove to be Australian captain Mal Meninga's final test in Australia after announcing that he would retire at the end of 1994, the Australian Kangaroos racked up a record winning margin in the first ever test match at Parramatta Stadium (and the first test in Sydney played at a suburban ground rather than a major venue) by defeating the hapless French 58-0.
Following the disaster of France's 1981 tour where the standard of the French teams play had dropped alarmingly resulting in poor attendances for the tests in Brisbane and Sydney, the Australian Rugby League had ruled that until they upped their game, the Australian team would no longer play tests against the French in the two capital cities. The 1990 test, France's first in Australia since 1981 (following the cancelled 1987 tour) had been played on a freezing night in the New South Wales country town of Parkes in front of a capacity crowd of 12,384 fans. The attendance for that game, and that it was Mal Meninga's last test match in Australia, saw the ARL relax their stance and allow the game to be played in Sydney.
Despite the French team not being regarded as a top line international team any more (indeed this was France's 11th loss in a row in all tests since 1992), the game was played in front of a ground record attendance of 27,318 which as of 2016 remains the record attendance for the venue. This was also the highest attendance for an Australia vs France test since 54,290 attended the World Cup Final at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 10 June 1968.
This was the only rugby league test match played in Australia during 1994. At the end of the year the Australian's would embark on their successful 1994 Kangaroo tour of Great Britain and France during which they again defeated France 74-0 in Béziers. At the time the 74-0 score was a world record test match victory eclipsing the 58-0 win here in Sydney.
France would not play another test against Australia until 2004 while they would not play again in Australia until the 2008 Rugby League World Cup.
Fiji vs France
In what was Fiji's first official rugby league test match, they defeated the French team 20-12 at the National Stadium in Fiji's capital city of Suva.
Aftermath
The French team were in the grip of a 22 match losing streak (which included two drawn tests), not having won a test since defeating Papua New Guinea 28-14 in Carcassonne on 24 November 1991. They would not win another rugby league test match until defeating South Africa 30-17 in Arles on 6 December 1997.