All Blacks seeking first last-test win since 1928

Press, 18 September 1976, Page 52

All Blacks seeking first last-test win since 1928

From T. P. McLEAN Johannesburg W as it cause for gloom or hope when a former England half-back, Nigel Starmer-Smith, who is now one of the king bees of 8.8. C. television, said of the All Blacks’ last serious training run before their final test with the Springboks at Ellis Park tomorrow morning: “They didn’t look good?”

If that ofd truism of the theatre—that the worst possible start to a run of a production is a top-notch dress rehearsal —still holds good, the All Blacks’ ineffective run could be taken as reassurance they will do well enough to square the test series. Unfortunately, history is strongly against them. In the final match of the last 15 home international series played by Springbok sides, the South Africans have only once been beaten. Not since Mau. ice Brownlie’s team of 1923, which admittedly was favoured by the rain at Newlands, has an All Black team in South Africa won the final test of a series. With injuries counting against these All Blacks, the chances of Andy Leslie's side tomorrow are slim, perhaps even hopeless. At the training run on Thursday, Peter Whiting’s mutilated ear started bleeding and Perry Harris had to pull out because of an eye injury he suffered from an aimed blow in the match with Griqualand West early in the week.

Grant Batty’s appearance is a triumph of hope over appearance — the way he stumps along, when not equipped with his kneeguard suggests that us should already be under surgical care in hospita' instead of having to wait for some days for treatment after his return home next week. So the All Blacks, with their casualties, are facing a prodigious task, which has been complicated by their

return to Johannesburg's high altitude and summery conditions, with temperatures of about 25 degrees in the last few days. It is interesting that the manager of the New Zealand team at the world crosscountry championship some time ago, Mr Norman Clarke of Palmerston North, who made a special s:udy of the effects of altitude on athletes after going to the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, forecast back in June that the benefits of the build-up against altitude the All Blacks woulu gain from their first sojum to the Veldt would ha . 2 been lost down in the lowlands during the time when they played the third test at Cape Town. Mr Clarke considered that the 20 days the All Blacks had to acclimatise to altitude on their first visit to the Veldt country would be beneficial when they returned to the coast but that their time at high levels before the last test would be too short to allow them to deliver maximum performance. He did not take in another problem of high importance to tomorrows performance — the rushing about the team would be doing in final shopping for wives or next of kin as they came back to the big smoke.

Perhaps it was this quality, or lack of quality, which Mr Starmer-Smith observed on. Thursday and which caused him to make such a gloomy criticism of the team.

On the other hand, the Springboks came to Johannesburg on Wednesday morning, trained very hard in that afternoon and the following morning skipped

50 kilometres into the country, far from prying cameramen and newsmen, to take in a training run and visit a game farm. Being unbeatable in the series they will start the match with a confidence the All Blacks will find tremendously hard to shake. Perhaps this could be the All Blacks’ big hope. It is a New Zealand experience that the team going into the match favoured by experts and amateurs to be certain of victory can come a serious cropper and be beaten.

Much responsibility tomorrow will rest upon the Maoris of the All Blacks’ front row, upon Frank Oliver as a line-out ball-winner or destroyer and on Sid Going as a director of tactical attacks. The All Blacks dare not miss tackles as they have done in their last few matches and they dare not miss kicks at goal of the elementary standard offered to Going at Newlands. Beyond this, the AH Blacks have simply got to move the ball at such speed that such heavyweights as Kevin de Klerk, Johan Strauss and Klippies Kritzinger will be puffing like old steam trains long before the match has reached its last quarter. At their best, early in the tour, the All Blacks found their physical condition to be superior even to men who had lived and played on the high veldt all of their lives.

Perhaps in the final analysis everything will depend upon Andy Leslie’s ability to wrest from his men those great qualities which distinguished most of

the same men when they played their famous march through the fields of Dublin, Cardiff and London at the end of their 1974 tour. In those matches, against teams superior to the present Springboks, the All Blacks were unbeatable, and exhilarated. By such a spirit they could win tomorrow and return home next week with banners tattered but unstripped from their poles. Teams for the test, which starts at 1.30 a.m. Sunday morning and which win be refereed by Mr G. Bezuldenhout. who controlled the second and third tests, are:— New Zealand: D. J. Robertson; B. G. Williams, B. J. Robertson, G. B. Batty, j. E. Morgan, O. D. Bruce; S. M. Going; A. R. Leslie (captain); I. A. Kirkpatrick, P. J. Whiting, F. J. Oliver, K, A. Eveleigh; W. K. Bush, R. W. Norton, K. K. Lambert: Reserves: Backs, L. J. Davis, T. W. Mitehell, W. M. Osborne. Forwards, G. M. Crossman, K. J. Tanner, L. G. Knight. South Africa: I. W. Robertson; J. S. Germishuys, P. J. M. Whipp, J. J. Oosthuizen, C. F. Pope, G. R. Bosch; P. C. R. Bayvel; M. du Plessis (captain); J. L. Kritzinger, M. L. van Heerden, K. B. H. de Klerk, J. H. H. Coetzee; J. C. J. Standee, J. L. van Wyk, J. H. P. Strauss. Reserves: Backs, D. S. L. Snyman, B. J. Wolmarans, G. S. Cowley. Forwards. R. J. Cockrell. D. du; Plessis, Lourens. For the benefit of viewers watching the direct telecast, the following numbers will be worn by the players:— New Zealand: 13, Duncan Robertson; 14, Williams; 13. Morgan; 12, Bruce Robertson; 11, Batty; 10, Bruce; 9, Going; 8, Leslie; 7, Eveleigh; 6, Whiting; 5, Oliver; 4, Kirkpatrick; 3, Bush; 2, Norton; 1, Lambert; 16, Crossman; 17, Tanner; 18, Knight; 19, Davis; 20, Mitchell; 21, Osborne. South Africa: 15, lan Robertson; 14, Pope; 13, Germishuys; 12, Oosthuizen; 11, Whipp; 10, Bosch; 9, Bayvel; 8, Morne du Plessis; 7, Kritzinger; 6, Coetzee; 5, van Heerden; 4, de Klerk; 3, Strauss; 2, van Wyk; 1, Stander; 16, Snyman; 17, Corlwy; 18, Wplmarans; 19, Cockrell; 20, Daan du Plessis: 21. Lourens.