Club had invited WG to form a team for the tour. There were several refusals but eventually a team including Fred Grace, Walter Gilbert, Harry Jupp, James Lillywhite, William Oscroft and James Southerton boarded the P&O steamer Mirzapore at Southampton and sailed to Melbourne where they received a rapturous welcome. Then it all turned sour. Grace and the 1880 Australian tour In the aftermath of the Sydney Riot of 1879, cricketing relations between England and Australia were strained and the 1880 Australian tourists had difficulty arranging fixtures. The establishment at Lord's, spearheaded by Lord Harris, had effectively embargoed them and they only played four first-class matches from May to August but many more against local club teams. They were most welcome in the north of England but one southern player who had faith in them was Fred Grace. Operating on a freelance basis for a match fee, he played against the Australians in their opening match for a club team in Southampton and then for three others in Manchester, Northampton and Harrogate. Importantly for the Australians, Grace was a go-between from them to WG who, in the words of Malcolm Knox, "did not belong to (any Lord's) clique". WG, as always, was pragmatically alert to financial opportunity and offered them a match against Gloucestershire. This broke the Lord's embargo and Harris soon relented. The Gloucestershire v Australians match took place Monday, 2 to Wednesday, 3 August at the Clifton College Close Ground and the Australians won by 68 runs. All the Grace brothers and Billy Midwinter played for Gloucestershire but, with eleven wickets, Fred Spofforth won the game for the Australians. It was a big match both on the day and in terms of its legacy. Knox says that Gloucestershire treated it "as an international" and a huge crowd attended. In the longer term, it convinced first the Graces and then Harris that international cricket was the way forward and negotiations began to ensure that such a match took place that summer. Grace was selected along with EM and WG to play for England at The Oval. The match was played Monday, 6 to Wednesday, 8 September and was later recognised as the inaugural Test in England. Grace was out for nought in both innings and so became, albeit retrospectively, the first player to be dismissed for a pair on Test debut. He made his mark on the match by