Sports features The ‘Kai koura Express’ has not yet run out of steam

Press, 23 April 1980, Page 28

Sports features The ‘Kai koura Express’ has not yet run out of steam

By

RAY CAIRNS

The convener of the. All Blacks selection panel, Eric Watson, mused before the trial teams were announced that some he considered “certainties” for the Australian tour team need not necessarily play at Hamilton. Andy Haden can undoubtedly rest secure that he will be off on his never-ending rugby tripping again in May, but Brian Ford’s omission almost certainly means that his travelling in the quest of top rugby will be the 130 km from Kaikoura to Blenheim, and wherever the Marlborough rugby team takes him. The day before the trial teams were announced, Ford said that as he was available for nomination for the trials, he would logically be available both to play them and to tour Australia if selected. But he left no room for doubt that retaining an All Blacks place did not occupy the most prominent place in his rugby aspirations. Certainly, “I would naturally like to retain my All Black place, but if I don’t, I’ll work to make some young guy push me out.” Deprived he may have been of that particular competition, but Ford has a full book of incentives still facing him. The individual goal beckoning him is the lure of being

the tenth New Zealander to score a century of firstclass tries. “I think I’m only four or five away” — he is actually on 92 — “and as long as there is not as big a drought as last year, when the wings didn’t see much of the ball, I must have a chance of getting there this season.

“If the game the other day is any indication” (Marlborough beat Victoria in a flowing match), “we will be opening it out more. Marlborough’s games in the last couple of years have been fairly stereotyped, and I feel the national championship has done that. No risks are taken, the tendency is to play 10-man rugby, teams are a bit over-cautious.” So much for the desire to see the ball; now for the other almost overwhelming desire. “I’ve been in seven South Island teams for four losses and three wins. I’d like to be there again to help even the score.” The island teams which take the field annually now bear little resemblance to those first selected. but Ford is fiercely determined to win a place again. "Every one I’ve been in has been a good

game, perhaps because we’re always the underdog, and rise above that. You know, the North is mostly New Zealand players, they have most of the selectors, most of the New Zealand council, so the incentive is there.” They are spurs, but Ford otherwise has no rugby-playing ambitions, other than “just to keep playing rugby for ’ a few years yet. But I would like to try and win a club competition with Kaikoura. That has so far eluded me, apart from the first round last year, which we shared with Awatere; and in 1970, we won the Hurunui competition and drew for the Cameron Shield with Kaiapoi.

“So my whole club ambition this year was to win the club competition in Marlborough, but the chances don’t look too good after the loss on Saturday.”

Though it now appears unlikely Ford will ever don a ’black jersey with silver fern again, the good news for Marlborough is that he is likely to pull the scarlet jersey over his head for virtually the full season.

Two or three floods in the last month have meant a heavy work-load for the contracting firm of Ford Bros, and Brian Ford makes the point that if he is to attend representative practice in Blenheim, he has to leave Kaikoura at four in the afternoon, at the latest. “If I’m working at Waiau or Oaro” — and he was hard at work in the Oaro river bed when interviewed — “that means leaving earlier still.

“So with our present busyness — we’ve had a rush, but things should quieten down a.bit now — I’ve told the selectors I may have to tone down the training a bit. It’s not a lack of interest, because I love the activity that

much that 1 won’t sto; until it becomes a physical thing, when I’m that injured that I can’t play again; I’ll keep playing, even if it means droppin; back to senior reservwhen I get too slow.

“And "as far as rep stul is concerned, if I lived it ‘town,’ I wouldn’t retire until I was dropped; l’< make some young guy pume out of my position I’m that great a believer in physical fitness, 1 have to train all the time. I’ve got to that stage where 1 enjoy it, and if I miss a week of training, I’m unbearable.

“Where most go for a Sunday drive, I go for a Sunday jog.” In common with many with a few .seasons of rep-, resentative rugby behind them, Ford is coy about his age; “Under 30, anyway. Actually just going 28, just gone 28, around 28. Or is it 27?” He does establish, though, that it is 12 years since he was on the wing for the Canterbury under--18 team, and many thousands of kilometres have been notched on his travel log in the intervening years. While Kaikoura was in the Hurunui sub-union, Ford faced a regular round of journeys to Christchurch (when in Canterbury teams), Waiau or Kaiapoi for various representative team practices, and now to Blenheim. It “gets tiring,” he observes, and also offers some positive views on the intrusion of representative games into club programmes.

“The rep programme is wrecking club competitions, and it annoys me a bit as a believer in the value of a club. Mine has done a lot for me, and it is disappointing when you cannot serve it properly, especially in a place like Marlborough, where there is not a lot of depth in senior teams. So I really feel rep stuff should not start until July, or perhaps August.

“But mind you,” he adds quickly, “I’ve noticed Marlborough club football is harder than it was, and it was good for Kaikoura football to go to Marlborough, just as it w’as good for Hurunui to go to North Canterbury. That showed this season: w r e won three pre-season games against Hurunui teams without much trouble, but lost our first Marlborough club match. “And speaking personally, for me to go anywhere when Kaikoura was in Hurunui, I had to go to town. It was virtually impossible to become an All Black from Kaikoura while it was with Hurunui.”

Ford’s All Black position, given to him unkindly later than he deserved, and taken away when he perhaps still had something to offer, will probably not now be returned to him. But it is a fair bet that his thirst for the game is unquenched that he will continue to exhibit for Marlborough the fierce combativeness he always showed in his pride in wearing a black jersey. Retirement?. Not really part of his rugby thinking vet. Next year? “F never look at the next year, certainly not at the end of a season. But once I retire, I’ll retire, and it will be because of the distance involved in training.”