French Deny Rough Play Claims

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31725, 8 July 1968, Page 1

French Deny Rough Play Claims

(From N.Z.P.A. staff correspondent, PAUL CAVANAGH) DUNEDIN, July 7.

The acting manager of the French Rugby team, Mr A. Garrigue, told a press conference this morning that the unusual number of injuries to Otago players in the FranceOtago match was just bad luck.

He said that allegations made after the game that players had been kicked on the ground were unjustified. Mr Garrigue said that if there had been any kicking in the rucks by the French team it had not been deliberate and that it had been the object of his players to play the ball. He said he did not think there had been any rough play during the game, apart

from a few stiff-arm tackles. He had already spoken to the players about these. “Next time we may have the misfortune to lose players,” he said. Mr Garrigue said the up-and-under was always dangerous as a detonator of rough play. He said be appreciated the tactical value of the up-and-under, but there was always a chance of players becoming edgy when one player had to take the ball with two or three from the opposing team charging at him. Displeasure at some of the methods employed by the French team was expressed by Mr E. A. Watson, coach of the Otago team, according to the Press Association. “There was too much stiffarm tackling and kicking in the rucks which was quite unnecessary,” Mr Watson said. “Our forwards said there was a lot of kicking in the rucks.”

He said that the French team was such a good one that it should not have had to resort to this approach. Dudley Manning, sports editor of the “Otago Daily Times,” says in his report that this was a victory for which France cannot be accorded full honour.

“There were, indeed, times when the team produced Rugby at its magnificent best, as best exemplified by the team’s opening try—a try bom of sheer power and poetry of movement thereafter. “But there were other times, particularly in the second half, when there was apparent malignancy about the approach of some of the French to the game—a malignancy which saw the prostrate player in the scrummage not heeled out of the way but the object of flying boots. “Out in the open, too, there were the arm-bar tackle aimed at the head and the

late tackle, the kind of tackles for which the receiver is ill-prepared. “In the first half there were dust-ups among the forwards mainly brought on by the fact that some in both teams were offending by going into the mauls in off-side positions. “But what happened in the second half was something of entirely different character which had the crowd simmering and some so incensed that they committed the totally unpardonable offence of cheering any time a French player was on the temporarily injured list. “During this half Otago lost four players. E. W. Kirton was first to go, suffering from a bruised hip bone and muscles after being caught on the ground in a maul; next was a flanker, S. H. Reaney, who was mildly concussed; then followed the second fiveeighths, D. J. Robertson, a more serious case of concussion, after he was the object

of a late tackle; and finally, a prop, L. A. Clark, was carried from the field on a stretcher after being caught down on the ground in a scrummage,” says Manning. Clark is not sure how he suffered a minor fracture of the spine. “I didn’t feel any boot kick me, although some people have said I must have been kicked, Clark said from his bed in Dunedin Public Hospital.

Clark hopes to leave hospital in the next few days. “I thought I’d just get a rub and keep on playing but when I got up I couldn’t walk Clark said that it was not the dirtiest match he had played in, but he criticised the Frenchmen’s rucking habits. “In the rucks our only aim is to get the ball back with our feet but they seem to use their feet without looking," he said.