George Nepia, the Black Panther

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28702, 27 September 1958, Page 5

George Nepia, the Black Panther

TVHATEVER the divergence of opinions on New Zealand’s greatest full-back, George Nepia will always occupy a special place in the Rugby story. The older generation will retain vivid memories of Nepia. For them, but especially for the younger generation of New Zealanders who were not fortunate enough to have seen Nepia in action, Denzil Batchelor’s account of the game between the 1924 All Blacks and England at Twickenham, contained in “Rugby Foptball,” an anthology compiled by Kenneth Pelmear in collaboration with J. E. Morpurgo (George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 357 pp.). will have a special place, too.

Here are some excerpts from Batchelor’s beautifully - written account of this game:— “How had the boy Nepia the finely tempered nerves to stand the strain of appearing as target for the day in match after match: of beating off, single-handed, the ravening packs and the threequarter lines in full cry with his own single pair of thick whipcord arms? He was between short and taH, and his thighs were like young tree trunks. His head was fit for the prow of a Viking Longship, with its passionless, sculped bronzed features and plume of blue-black hair. Behind the game he slunk from side to side like a black panther on the prowl; but not like a black panther behind bars—like a lord of the jungle on the prowl for a kill That was his concept of his function.

Challenge “When the ball came to him, rollicking first this way, then that, a few yards ahead of a bunched pack of blood-thirsty forwards. he rejoiced in the challenge. A lesser man might win applause by a fly-kick to touch or even by going down like the Boy on the Burning Deck, whelmed by destiny in disaster and immortality. Not so George Nepia. He leapt at the ball like an art critic snatching at a fault of technique by his best friend He went to work backwards, a fury of shoulders, elbows and thighs, storming through the massed ranks of the opposing pack. Eight to one against were the odds that exactly suited him. “His tackling, which resembled<

a woodsman felling a Californian pine, had a mere heartless efficiency. But bullocking through a pack with its blood up and no-one between himself and the line—that was enough to bring a flicker of a smile to the Maori' warmask of his face. His long, lowangled kicking, especially of a heavy ball, was a miracle of accuracy and length. His punts raked the touchlines. A third of the length of the field was the average he liked to maintain, and if the ball dropped more than a yard or two over the touch line, his eyelids would narrow in scornful self-criticism. 1 suppose from time to time he proved that be was not superhuman by failing to find touch, but who can cross his heart and swear to recalling such an occasion?

Defiance “The last time I saw Nepia was more than 10 years after that immortal game between New Zealand and England. He was playing for his country against New South Wales. It was the last of the representative games in a series: the rubber hung on It; and Nepia was at bay behind a beaten side with a luckily, acquired winning score, and an enemy launching attack after attack against what seemed the sole standing survivor of the side. “For a quartet of an hour he played New South-Wales as near single-handed as made ho difference. Lear defying the elements was nothing to it Over and over again he revived the first, fine careless rapture of his boyhood, charging the solid phalanx of the enemy with the ball in safe keeping, and at the game’s end his line was still intact “As Rugby players go he was an old man on that afternoon.

No Peer “When I hear others debating whether pawky Drysdale with his neatly devastating tackle and crisp relieving kick, or OwenSmith. or Crawford, or Ramis, or H. B. Tristam himself will play in due course at full-back for the Kingdom of Heaven v. The Rest, I turn to stone. It is not with me

a question of whether Nepia was the best full-back in history. It *is a question as to which of the

others is fit to loose the laces of his Cotton Oxford boots;" Mr Batchelor also throws a little more light on an incident in that game which has also gone down in the annals of international Rugby—the ordering off of Cyril Brownlie. He has this to say:— “The great game drew what at the time was easily the largest crowd ever attracted-to Twickenham. They were there to see sensations, and within 10 minutes

of the start they saw the greatest and worst of all. The referee blew one of those protracted blasts on the whistle that can only mean three things: the other two being no-side or the All Clear after an air raid. This time a hush fdll. Then in the Grandstands, all the bees in Britain began to buzz with the unanimity

of the choir of morning stars. Head down, a New Zealander strode from mid-field on the long journey that led between the whispering crowd into the long dark tunnel ending in the dressing room. It was Cyril Brownlie, and his offence, as reported by referee A. E. Freethy, was that he had deliberately kicked an opponent. “After all these years, perhaps the small boy who watched from the front row of the standing enclosure may be permitted to comment. Though the game was less than 10 minutes old he had l seen one of the England forwards

break off a leisurely pursuit of a cross-kick to administer a shrewdly placed hack at a prostrate opponent. That had come first. Which side deserved to lose a player by disqualification?" For all those who love ’. the handling game this book will provide many hours of enjoyable reading. It is not merely a history of the game*. The reader first learns something of. the beginnings of “the great foot balle” during the reigns if Saxon, Norman, Tudor, and Stuart rulers and later all that happened as the result of William Webb Ellis’s “fine disregard for the rules of football” at Rugby School Good Reading The book is divided into nine parts—each of them containing anecdotes on players and games played, many by such well-known authors and critics aS Thomas Hughes (“Big Side” from “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”), Adrian Stoop, Werner Barnard, J. B. Priestley, Hugh Walpole, P G. Wodehouse, Rudyard Kipling, A. G. Macdonnell, J. P. W. Mallalieu, T. McLean (New Zealand) to name just a few. It is fully illustrated. ‘ This is not a cheap book, but one which, for the quality of the writing and content, is worth every penny.