Bookshelf

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31987, 14 May 1969, Page 15

Bookshelf

“On Trek Again”—The British Rugby Lions in South Africa, by J. B. G. Thomas. Pelham Books, Ltd. 186 pp. With the imminent short tour of the Welsh team in New Zealand and the tour of the AU Blacks to South Africa next season, this book has a fair amount of interest for New Zealand Rugby followers. Thomas is an experienced sports writer, but like all patriotic Welshmen he has his prejudices, which are revealed from time to time in his comments. He starts with the tour in retrospect and seems to spend too many words defending the Lions and their manager against some newspaper allegation of disorderly conduct off the field. Every touring team of lusty young fellows has its quota of rumbustious types, so he need not have used more than 1000 words on that topic. For New Zealanders his comments on referees are interesting, but hardly flattering to our referees. After a plea for neutral referees in the Southern Hemisphere he turns a blast on us with this quotation: “Every side that goes to New Zealand complains about their referees, and this is one reason why a visiting side will never win a test series there. It is quite impossible to do so—” He has praise for the replacement rule, but does not give New Zealand credit for having long advocated this step against stern opposition from the Home unions. It was surprising to find, however, that the emergencies were not togged ready to take the field, and the average delay was from 11 to 15 minutes. His comments on treatment of injured touring players might very well be considered by our Rugby administrators, as well as his suggestions on modes of travel in South Africa. There follows a section on a tactical review of the 1 tour through which can be 1 discerned a note of depression that seems hardly justified. True, the Lions did not win one of the four tests, but any team that can go through a South African tour with only one defeat by the provinces, draw one of the tests and lose two others by only five points each cannot be too bad, especially as the key halfback combination of the Welsh pair of Edwards and John was broken early in the tour by John’s long lasting injury, Thomas places the blame for the team’s disappointing result on the inside backs who seemed to have had only one ploy for moving ahead—to kick, and apparently without much good direction. He goes on to discuss the basic defects in the training at school and club level in the Home counties and mentions, among others, C. K. Saxton and F. R. Allen as trainers with a thorough grip of the modern game and the hardness of approach that makes players “live and die for the game.” Part two of the book is a day-to-day diary of the tour, which can hardly be of general interest in this country. One item, however, is worthy of notice. At the team’s departure from London Airport, says Thomas, the press conference was dominated by the 8.8. C. and I.T.V. interviewers who pestered the manager and captain with politically loaded questions about apartheid and Rhodesia. The reader is left in no doubt about the author’s views on politics in sport. The 20 matches are then chronicled ifr the tidy sta-

tistical manner of this author and there are appendices showing tables of match results, match appearances, point scorers and injuries suffered. There are alsd 39 photographs to lighten the text.

This book will, no doubt, be handed on with pride to the grandsons of the tourists as an excellent record of a team that strove manfully against the powerful Springboks in the great game of Rugby. But a New Zealander would need to be an inveterate fan to read it from cover to cover.