’Boks Face Long, Tough Season

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30578, 22 October 1964, Page 22

’Boks Face Long, Tough Season

fNZ. PA.-Reuter—Copyright) JOHNANESBURG, October 21. The 1964 Rugby season in Southern Africa is virtually over and already preparations have begun for the season of 1965. This will be the most strenuous the Springboks have ever had to face in a long Rugby-play-ing history.

During the season no fewer than four countries will be visited: 34 matches will be

played—including eight International—and more than 35,000 miles travelled before the Springboks return to South Africa for a break from Rugby. The 1965 season kicked off in Cape Town, at Newlands on September 28 this year when about 90 of the country’s top players assembled for a series of trial matches to select the Springbok team to tour Ireland and Scotland in April, 1965. The players selected will be asked to keep fit throughout the summer season which, by the end of next year, would mean for them an unbroken spell

of about 18 months of hard Rugby. In Ireland and Scotland the Springboks will play only four matches in little over two weeks. Two are against Ireland and Scotland. Within a week of returning to South Africa, top players will again assemble for another week of trials—this time to assist the selectors in picking the Springbok team to take on the Wallabies and All Blacks.

The Australian tour starts in June and includes two tests. The last time the Wallabies and the Springboks met, in South Africa, the Australians,

captained by J. Thornett, won two of the four matches. Since then the Wallabies have lost a series in New Zealand, although they won the third test, 20-5. The Springboks have yet to beat New Zealand by a 15 point margin —the best to date being the 13-0 win in the first test in Johannesburg in 1960. In New Zealand the Springboks start the hardest part of the long season on June 30 against Poverty Bay. Four of the 24 New Zealand matches are test matches. A harder and tougher Rugby test series cannot be found than between South Africa and New Zealand.