100-try chasers

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33874, 20 June 1975, Page 28

100-try chasers

Only three players have achieved a century of tries in New Zealand first-class Rugby, but that number might well be doubled by the end of this year.

The race is on among three of the country’s best-known international players to determine which one will be first to reach the 100-try milestone.

lan Kirkpatrick (Poverty Bay) started this season with 91. He was followed by the All Black wings, Grant Batty

(Wellington), 89, and Bryan Williams (Auckland), 85. Kirkpatrick has yet to score in a first-class match this season, and Batty, with tries for Wellington against Scotland and WairarapaBush, has drawn level with him. Williams’s two tries in the test against Scotland raised his figure to 87. On the ratio of tries to matches, Batty has the best chance to reach the century first. He has played in 191 first-class games, Williams in 146, and Kirkpatrick in 210. All three rank high on the list of All Black scorers. Wil-

liams, who has 48 tries, is now only one behind the’record established by the nimble second five-eighths of the 1905 team, Jimmy Hunter.

Kirkpatrick (45) is third and Batty is fifth, with 39. Kirkpatrick holds the test record with 13 tries.

The three players who have scored 100 tries or more in New Zealand are Ron Jarden (Wellington) and Ross Smith (Canterbury), both wings, and Kel tremain (Hawke’s Bay), a flanker. Jarden scored 145 tries, Tremain 136, and Smith 102.