Whiting needed for tests

Press, 19 July 1976, Page 28

Whiting needed for tests

From T. P McLEAN How well the outstanding lock forward, Peter Whiting, will stand the strain of his

next few matches has become a matter of most serious concern to the touring AU Blacks. Whiting himself is reticent,

although he candidly contends he is playing dreadfully at the line-outs. When he was crashed to the ground by a heavy shoulder charge in the match, against Boland on Wednesday, Whiting lay still for some time and press photographers, as he later said, gathered like ghouls. Happily, Whiting was not [carried off on a stretcher. I Happily, too. there was no I call for the reserve lock, Gary Seear. During one break in play the captain, Andy Leslie, asked the team’s most efficient masseur, Mr D. Geddes, to tell Seear to warm up quietly. The captain’s idea was that Seear should merely stretch his legs in the cold and try to keep warm. Leslie was therefore shaken to see Seear going through a full warmup routine.

Old hands among the All Blacks feel that Whiting will recover his best form of two years ago, when he was considered the outstanding lineout man in the world. He was much troubled by his back in Australia in 1974, but was deliberately committed to game after game by the coach, Mr J. Stewart. Finally, after pleading for a rest, Whiting was stood down for one match before the first test with the Wallabies on the present tour. The new locks, Frank Oliver and Seear, have shaped well, especially the former, and Whiting’s partner, Hamish MacDonald, is still a first choice despite prognostications that he will be supplanted by Oliver. But it is vital to the All Blacks that Whiting be one of them and at the top of his form.