$295 rugby book snapped up

Press, 12 April 1978, Page 32

$295 rugby book snapped up

NZPA staff correspondent London Wilson Whineray and Kel Tremain, the New Zealand, Japanese and I Brazilian rugby unions bought it and a Welshman bought three and gave them away to friends. But the English Rugby >. Union turned it down, • saying it was too expensive. ■1 “It” is “Men in Black,” ' the S3OO history of New ; Zealand rugby, due to be ; published in August on 1 the eve of the first test between the All Blacks -■ and the Wallabies in Weli lington.

The publication of unquestionably the most comprehensive and most expensive book on the game’s top-level history in New Zealand coincides with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first official test in 1903. The publishers, John and Janet Blackwell, ; of Auckland’s Moa Publications, arrived in London this week from Hong Kong, lugging a giantsized proof copy of the book and set up office in New Zealand House. Only 954 copies of the collector’s item are being printed, and Mr Blackwell said there are already 870

firm orders. It costs $295 in New Zealand and $2OO (about $364) in Britain. “We’re trying to sell the rest in Britain and we are confident of doing so,” he said. One Welshman from Cowbridge, near Cardiff, bought three as presents. Apart from the cost, it is no ordinary book. It measures 53cm by 38cm, with two pages devoted to every test New Zealand has played. The statistics its authors — Neville McMilland and Rod Chester, of Auckland — have been compiling since 1971 are claimed to be mistakeproof.

Mr Blackwell said that one of New Zealand’s television channels was planning a documentary programme on the book and 8.8. C. Wales are also interested. The Blackwells will also visit Wales and among the samples they are carrying around — the book is too heavy to be continually carried — are specimens of the two pages covering the 1905 test against the Welsh, when R. G. Deans, of Canterbury, said he scored the try which would have avoided the All Blacks’ only loss.