Rugby Officials Deny Organised Retribution

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32164, 6 December 1969, Page 15

Rugby Officials Deny Organised Retribution

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON. New Zealand Rugby officials and players closed ranks against reported statements by the former international, C. R. Laidlaw, that organised retribution against erring opponents was used by the All Blacks.

Laidlaw, now a Rhodes scholar and captain of Oxford University, was quoted as saying: “If someone on the other team does something that oversteps the mark, and they’re fairly lenient standards, I’m sure, then retribution is a team responsibility.”

“There’s never any urgency about it. But he gets it eventually.” The New Zealand captain, B. J. Lochore, associated with All Black teams since 1993, said yesterday. “I can honestly say no All Black team since I have been playing has ever gone out to do someone over.

“In every game incidents crop up but only through tensions and the force of circumstances. Organised thuggery has never been a part of it. “The fellows don’t go into a game looking for trouble. There is too much involved in playing the game to go out with other things on your mind.” The present chairman of selectors, Mr I. M. H. Vodanovich, said: “I have never seen or heard a sign of anything like an organised jack-up to

do any one over. I have never heard of it in my experience as an All Black forward or as a selector. “As chairman of the selectional panel, I can say it would never be part of our means of beating our opponents.”

Mr T. C. Morrison, a former chairman of the national selection panel, said the statement did not hold water. “We know that some players in big games have bad feuds; we would be crazy to say they did not. But organised retribution? No. I would never go along with that “As one who gave team talks to All Black teams, I can say it would never be part of my philosophy to advise or suggest anything of the sort.”