Shelving’s frank assessment of the All Black tour

Press, 28 December 1978, Page 13

Shelving’s frank assessment of the All Black tour

One of the undoubted successes of the 1978 All Black Supporters’ tour of Great Britain, Ashley Shelving, spoke recently of the triumphs and difficulties of the tour.

At a press conference held on his farm in Merivale, Shelving said that most of the success of the tour was attributable to the wonderful spirit shared by the supporters. The spirit in question, a case of Glenrowling single malt whisky, had been purchased by the tour leader, garage proprietor Jack Upp, and liberally shared by him with the members of the group.

Shelving was a late arrival to the touring party. He had not been selected for the original group, an omission which surprised many people, though not Shelving himself. “I wasn’t really tour fit at the time the party was originally selected.” he said. “I had tom a hamstring on a supporters' tour of Southland, and the bloke whose hamstring it was had broken my jaw.” However, when side row supporter Clive Stunt had to be sent home to be treated for dipsomania incurred after the Irish test. Shelving was given his chance. “I had some difficulty at first adjusting to British in-

terpretations of the rules,” he said. “Railway booking clerks and London taxi drivers interpret things differently from their New Zealand counterparts.” However Shelving soon got the hang of things, and his achievement in travelling by taxi from Marble Arch to South Kensington without tipping the driver is regarded as one of the high lights of the tour. Perhaps the most controversial incident on the tour involving Shelving was the by-now-celebrated occasion when he was sent out of the Purple Cypriot strip club in Cardiff, after toasting New Zealand’s victory in the test against Wales. Television replays of the events leading up to his expulsion show clearly that Shelving definitely had his hand on the bosom of one of the strippers. He now admits the infringement. “But it was no worse than what the Welsh themselves were doing,” he claims. “They were over those sheilas like a rash. Randy as goats, those Taffies.” Certainly the incident caused a great stir. In the “Western Mail,” J. B. G. Thomas called for New Zealand’s expulsion from the Commonwealth, while his colleague, Clem Thomas, writing in the “Observer,” asserted that Britain should cease to lend support to access for New

Zealand lamb and dairy products to the Common Market.

Perhaps the sanest and most rational comment on the matter came from the proprietor of the Purple Cypriot, Mr Vince Moussaka.

"Look,” he told a 8.8. C. television team, "that Kiwi

can come back and paw my girls any time. Business has never been so good since 1 chucked him out. Together, he and I have put the Purple Cypriot on the rugby maps of the world.”

Shelving says that although he enjoyed the tour enormously, he is now

glad to be back on his farm in Menvale. “A tour of Great Britain is every rugby supporter’s dream.” he says. “But sooner or later you have to come back to reality, and for me, reality is a farm in Merivale.” That, somehow, seems the measure of the man.