AWESOME POWER OF THE MEN IN BLACK

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31256, 31 December 1966, Page 15

AWESOME POWER OF THE MEN IN BLACK

rpHE miasma of rough Rugby which enveloped many of the games played by the 1966 Lions tended to obscure the tremendous performance of the All Blacks in winning all four tests to finally make some redress for the humiliation suffered in 1949 when F. R. Allen, coincidentally the coach this year, saw his team lose all four tests to South Africa. No matter what conclusions have been reached from the post mortems on the cadaver of the Lions it is completely irrefutable that the 1966 All Blacks pack was one of the finest to have represented New Zealand. The complete dominance at Carisbrook; the grind into the wind at Wellington; the resurgence at Lancaster Park when the Lions backs threatened to run rampant and the final devastation at Eden Park proved completely that B. J. Lochore’s pack will rank with and probably above the many great packs produced by New Zealand in recent years.

It has been said by some former All Blacks that the 1966 vintage would not compare with those of 1949, 1953, 1956 and sundry other years in between, depending on the allegiance of the critic.

But what must be realised is that the laws have changed and the power and speed of the Meads brothers. Gray, Nathan, Tremain and f Lochore has never been matched by any other New Zealand side.

K. L. Skinner, one of New Zealand’s greatest props, has said that in 1949 not one of the test pack in South Africa knew how to run with the ball. Their sole training was for the rucking and tight game.

Now it is so different. C. E. Meads, Tremain, S. T. Meads and K. F. Gray are perhaps more fearsome than any back when they start to run with the ball.

The purists may long for the day when the ball is moved smoothly along the back-line, but could any Rugby be more impressive than at the first test when suddenly Tremain bolted through the front of the line-out; within seconds the Meads brothers, Lochore, McLeod and Gray had fanned out with him. The movement swept exhilaratingly for 50 yards.

Then there was Colin Meads’s fantastic solo run

of 50 yards in the first test; Tremain’s finishing of a bewildering 45-yard movement in the second test. But it was not all the free-running stuff. A. Hodgson, one of the greatest forwards ever produced by Australia, flew to New Zealand to see the second test.

He said he would have paid ten-fold just to see the last few minutes of the test when the All Blacks, leading 16-12 and penned on their goal-line, walked the Lions pack back yards and then screwed them into touch. To him it was Rugby power, training and dis-

cipline which was matchless. That, then, is the abiding memory of the tests: the strength, power and coordination of the All Black pack. But it was not all black; the sparkle of C. M. H. Gibson’s scarlet jersey was a reminder that great backs are still with us.