Here for the view from Lancaster Park, no more

Press, 30 October 1981, Page 12

Here for the view from Lancaster Park, no more

A. K. GRANT

Dr Danie Craven, president of the South African Rugby Board, is back in the news again. Having just concluded his controversial visit to New Zealand for the purpose of not talking rugby to rugby administrators, he arrived at Christchurch Airport yesterday accompanied by 15 tall young men.

Each of the 15 tall young men was wearing a green rugby jersey white shorts and football boots. Asked if the young men were the Springbok rugby team, Dr Craven told reporters, “No, they are not the Springbok rugby team. What an absurd suggestion. They are friends of mine who have come here, like me, on a private visit to your beautiful country.” Asked why the young men were wearing football gear, Dr Craven said, “I told them of the beautiful spring weather you have in New Zealand at. this time of the year, and obviously they have decided to dress to make the most of it. They must have all gone to the same menswear shop.” Asked why each of the green rugby jerseys had a springbok emblazoned on it, Dr Craven said he assumed that the springbok was the manufacturer’s trade' mark.

Dr Craven would not discuss the group’s itinerary in detail, but admitted that he and his young friends planned to visit Lancaster Park. “Lancaster Park is famous all over the world as one of New Zealand’s great beauty spots,” he said. “I

have been telling my young friends of the magnificent view of the gasworks that you get from No. 3 stand, and of the even finer view of No. 5 stand you get from the goalposts at the No. 1 stand end.” Dr Craven hotly denied that the purpose of the group’s visit to Lancaster Park was to play a game of rugby against the Canterbury team. “What nonsense!” he said. “Wherever did you get an idea like that?” Told that newspapers had been carrying advertisements for a Canterbury-Springbok ' game for several days, Dr Craven said, “The Canterbury Rugby Union is known all over the world for its tremendous sense of humour. The advertisements were probably a practical joke.” “I have no doubt,” Dr Craven went on, “that my young friends will want to wander round Lancaster Park. And if the Canterbury team happens to be on the ground at the time, then it may choose to show my young friends round, for forty minutes each way. And it may be that my young friends will find, when they are on the ground, that some of them are more towards the front, and some of them are more towards the back. That will be so that they each get a better view of No. 5 stand. But to suggest that that amounts to a game of rugby is simply mischievous.”

The Canterbury Rugby Union is being very tight-lipped about Dr Craven and his young

friends. Asked about Dr Craven, the presidet of the Canterbury union, Mr B. J. Drake, replied, “Dr who?” Told that “Dr Who” was a television programme, Mr Drake replied that he seldom watched television. Asked about the purpose of the visit by Dr Craven and the 15 tall young men, Mr Drake pointed out that thousands of people passed through Christchurch Airport, every week, and he was never asked about any of them. Meanwhile Lancaster Park is being surrounded by barbed wire and jumbo bins. Asked why this was being done, the police commander in charge of Dr Craven’s private visit, Inspector Holden Kingswood, said that Lancaster Park was often left unattended at weekends and that the jumbo bins and barbed wire were a normal precaution against burglary. He appealed to residents in the area to notify the police under the Neighbourhood Watch scheme if they saw suspicious persons such as thousands of protesters, loitering near the Park. Inspector Kingswood denied that the batteries of ground-to-air missiles installed behind the goalposts at Lancaster Park had anything to do with a threat from light aircraft. “If the Air Force chooses to have an Open Day at’ Lancaster Park, then that is their affair,” he told “The Press.” “Now I’m sorry, you must excuse me. I think I hear the tanks arriving.”