Bill Osborne quits

Press, 27 March 1981, Page 20

Bill Osborne quits

PA Wanganui The All Black midfield back, Bill Osborne, has announced his retirement from all first-class rugby. The 25-year-old Wanganui player has been plagued with a troublesome left elbow since New Zealand’s victorious centenary tour of Wales last year, and the injury has finally forced him to quit. His retirement means that the All Blacks will meet the Springboks this year without both the midfield players against Wales, Osborne and Bruce Robertson, as well as the captain, Graham Mourie. Faced with the option of a long rest or surgery on his elbow, Osborne has chosen surgery. He has decided to call it quits as far as toplevel rugby is concerned, after a career in which he has stamped himself as one of the All Black greats in the second five-eighths and centre positions. “It was not a decision I made lightly,” said Osborne, who has played almost 50 games for the All Blacks, including 14 tests, stretching back to his debut as a 20-year-old against Scotland at Eden Park in 1975.

He had hoped to retain his New Zealand place this year, too, but the pain suffered in several training sessions with his club, Kaierau, convinced him that an early 1981 appearance would be futile.

Diagnosis has shown his elbow injury to be linked with arthritis, with some "floating” bone chips adding to the problem. Injury has dogged Osborne over the last two years, with an early season rib complaint from an All Black trial seeing him miss most of the 1979 season before his trouble was found to be a dislocated hip: A fit and eager Osborne left New Zealand in October as a key player in Mourie’s all-conquering side to North America and Wales, but it was in the United States where he suffered the injury which has brought his rugby career to a premature end. “I moved in to tackle an American forward pretty hard.” Osborne said last evening. “He did something we don’t expect from a forward — he sidestepped. His body caught my forearm and jolted it back into the elbow joint.”