RUGBY Bremner Dropped From Test Team

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29240, 25 June 1960, Page 14

RUGBY Bremner Dropped From Test Team

[From GRAEME JENKINS, N.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent)

JOHANNESBURG, June 23. The All Black vice-captain, S. G. Bremner, will stand down from the New Zealand team for the first Rugby test with South Africa at Johannesburg tomorrow. This was decided after the team had had a light training run at Ellis Park yesterday.

The front row forward, M. W. Irwin, who was sightly injured in a road accident' last week-end, has been passed as fit and he will play. With Bremner out of the side, the young Taranaki utility player, T. P. O’Sullivan, will win his first test cap. He will be at centre outside T. R. Lineen. The teams are:— New Zealand.— D. B. Clarke; R W. Caulton. T. P. O’Sullivan. J R. Watt; T. R. Lineen, A. H. Clarke; K. C. Briscoe; R. J. Conway; K. R. Tremain, C. E. Meads I. N. Mac Ewan, P. F. H. Jones: W. J. Whineray, D. Young, and M. W. Irwin.

South Africa.—R. G. Dryburgh: H. van Zyl, I. Kirkpatrick. J Gainsford. M. Antelme; K. Oxlee; D. Lockyear; J. Nel; M. Pleser. J. Claassen. A. Malan, J. H. van Zyl; A. C. Koch, G. Malan, P. du Toit.

The referee will be Dr. E. A Strasheim.

The key to the match will be the New Zealand forwards. If they can reproduce their form of the Boland and Northern Transvaal matches the match should result in a comfortable win for New Zealand. This match will be New Zealand’s one hundredth test and the nineteenth between New Zealand and South Africa. The greatest winning margin in the series is 17-0 to South Africa in the first test in 1928. If the match conforms to expectations. South Africa will hold New Zealand well for the first half, but thereafter the superior fitness of the New Zealanders is likely to become a major factor in the game. In two of the hardest matches the opposition held out fairly well to half-time but faded badly later. With M. W. Irwin passed as fit to play—with three stitches in a

wound in the back of his head— New Zealand will be fielding the strongest available scrum. The Springboks will be giving away weight and size. In recent matches the All Black forwards have been playing with what at least one South African critic has termed “frightening power,” while the Springboks in the final trial match last Saturday looked anything but frightening in comparison. No doubt the South African effort will be much greater in the test than it appeared in the trill match, but it is almost impossible' to visualise this New Zealand scrum being beaten.