Like their father, Doug McLean, Sr., Bill's older brother Doug, Jr. had represented for Australia in both rugby codes before Bill left school. Bill too was a promising sportsman – goalkeeper in the 1938 Queensland Water Polo Team and rowing in Surf Boat crews winning the Queensland state championship in 1938. He pursued a rugby career and in 1938 played with the GPS club in Brisbane and made his representative debut with state selection the following year. From there he was selected for the ill-fated 1939 Wallaby tour to England captained by Vay Wilson. The team docked at Southampton on the day when England declared war and after a couple of weeks spent filling sandbags to start the war effort, the squad set sail for Australia having not played a game. Of the unlucky tourists only McLean, Keith Windon and Len Smith would return to footballing success after the war.
After the war McLean was selected in and captained an Australia XV versus The Rest trial match. His opposing captain was his tour teammate Keith Windon and when The Rest won the game, McLean was picked as tour captain for the first post-war Wallaby tour of New Zealand. Injured in the trial McLean missed the first six tour matches but played and captained the Wallabies in the two Tests against the All Blacks and the Test against the New Zealand Maori. The following year he again met the All Blacks when they visited Australia. He captained once against them and played in both Tests, the second as captain. He was pitted against the urbane Phil Hardcastle for the national captaincy honours in 1947. Hardcastle was a medical doctor who got on well with all but didn't lead from the front as was the confrontational style of McLean. McLean again led The Rest in a selection bout against an Australian XV, won the match and was confirmed again as the seventh Queenslander to lead Australia. The nine-month tour involved a circumnavigation of the globe and leadership of a mixture of battle hardened war veterans and young rugby stars. It was a singular honour on one of the world's great sporting tours. For McLean a return to the British Isles was in some ways a completion of unfinished business from 1939 and an opportunity to play on Twickenham's hallowed turf as his father and brother had before. The tour was only six matches old when McLean fulfilled his dream of playing at Twickenham in a minor clash against Combined Services. The match was near completion when he was hit by three tacklers from different angles. Writers Howell, Tressider and Shehadie each described the snap of bone breaking being audible to onlookers. McLean suffered a serious spiral fracture of the tibia and fibula. He played no further games on the tour and had now played his last representative match for Australia. The tour captaincy passed at that moment to the 21-year-old vice-captain Trevor Allan. McLean played for Queensland again in 1951 and 1952, also coaching both the Queensland and the Australian national side in those years.
