Bookshelf

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32589, 24 April 1971, Page 14

Bookshelf

“Eye Witness in Sport,” by Fred Labuschagne (A. H. and A. W. Reed). 168 pp. Illustrated. $4.50. ’THE author, a South x African sports reporter, has covered big sporting events in many parts of the world, but it is with a rather jaundiced eye that he looks back at some of the things he lias seen. His writing is described by a journalist colleague in a foreword as often controversial and always provocative. Some exaggeration is permitted in provocative writing, but it should be based on a reasonable nearness to fact to be of any worth. New Zealand readers would find so many of the author’s comments and opinions on their country so badly based as to make the rest of his eye witness accounts suspect. Take these few examples:— Talking on New Zealand’s Rugby madness he says that “only children with a physical disability can hope to escape the Rugby net.” On our geography and politics “the southern tip nudges Antarctica” and “it is largely ignored by the world tourist organisations and hamstrung by crippling import controls.” And our women, if ever they read books on sport, would be furious to hear him say that “fashions always seem to be 10 years behind the rest of the world—in the very conservative South Island 15 years.” Cricketers are more likely to be contemptuous than riled at this piece of information “. . . the poor weather conditions preclude the maintenance • of any deep interest (in cricket) especially in the South Island ... one lives more in one’s overcoat in New Zealand than in England.” But beyond that, why devote a whole chapter to what nearly every Rugby fan in New Zealand admits was an undeserved win

when D; B. Clarke kicked his six penalty goals to defeat the Lions in the 1959 test at DUnedin? Why indeed, except to make thinly veiled sneers at the impartiality of the referee and the sportsmanship of the New Zealand public. By way of compensation he writes a full chapter on the might of C. E. Meads. But “Pine Tree” would smile wryly at Labuschagne’s contention that even Boris Karloff would run for cover if he met the New Zealand lock in the heat of Rugby battle. On the subject of the Springboks he is somewhat despondent. The British forwards, he says, are matching and beating the South African packs. Reduction in farming communities, mechanisation, and affluence have contributed to the softening-up process and he warns that South Africa should not be fooled by its win against the 1970 All Blacks. His eye-witness accounts of golf, tennis, swimming, and boxing are mostly limited to one personality in each case—Gary Player, Cliff Drysdale, Karen Muir, all South Africans, and Cassius Clay. He sings the praises of all these, though in the case of Drysdale there are a few discordant notes thrown in for one who the author says never realised his potential. His cricket account covers a wider field, with K. Miller, the Australian all-rounder of a few years ago as his King of the Game. New Zealand is written well down in the author’s view, with but a grudging acknowledgement of what J. R. Reid’s team did on its South African tour. His final two chapters headed “Farewell Olympics” and “Need Isolation be the End?” provide perhaps the most interesting part of the book. They reveal a South African’s brooding on the sporting squeeze

on his country and the author’s only remedy seems to amount to South Africa playing in its own back yard. The author’s foreword writer, Chris Greyvenstein, sports editor of “The Cape Times,” says this book is never pompous, never dull. Indeed it is not, but, nevertheless, because Labuschagne’s extensive eyewitnessing has not, it appears, endowed him with a capacity to draw wise conclusions from his observations, it is unlikely that it will find a ready acceptance in New Zealand.