THE PRESS THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 1985. The wrong rugby decision

Press, 18 April 1985, Page 20

THE PRESS THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 1985. The wrong rugby decision

The New Zealand Rugby Football Union has made a bad decision. If the All Blacks tour South Africa this winter the outcome will be bad for the well-being of New Zealand rugby, damaging to comfort and harmony in New Zealand, and harmful to New Zealand’s reputation abroad. These are high prices to pay for the pleasure — for some New Zealanders — of a test series against the Springboks. Perhaps the council of the rugby union wants to demonstrate as well that New Zealand is still a free country where threats or dictation do not decide sports policies. If it stuck to its main task of doing what is best for rugby — and this entails consideration of what is good or bad for New Zealand in the activity of such a prominent sport — the council would not have let such a peripheral consideration enter its decision. Making a point of this nature is not necessarily consistent with determining the best course for rugby. Lamenting the decision now can do little good. The rugby union’s council must be presumed to have considered the great weight of evidence of the harm the tour may do to the support for rugby in New Zealand, and to other sports that may suffer because of the tour. The union’s council may believe that it is not the proper business of rugby administrators to be alarmed by threats to law and order in New Zealand, or to consider the implications of its actions for New Zealand’s reputation abroad. The great pity is that younger players are going to be drawn to other codes. Rugby’s reputation will be tarnished, even among many of its supporters, and even though it is far from clear that the council’s decision reflects the. feeling of clubs and players round the country. The views of some provincial unions are known; some are not. Even these do not necessarily tell exactly what players think about the tour. On balance, it must be assumed that the council has assessed opinion up and down New Zealand. The council would be negligent not to do so. The decision must be deeply disappointing to the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, and his colleagues in Parliament, all of whom voted against the tour. Mr Lange may not have helped his own case. The vigour with which he expressed the Government’s position may have stiffened the resolve of rugby administrators who resented being told how to conduct their business. However, Mr Lange has left no doubt in the minds of New Zealanders, or in the minds of people in other countries, that New Zealand is opposed to sporting contacts with South Africa. If his African tour achieved nothing else, it should have convinced several of the African States where hostility to South Africa is strongest that New Zealand supports their cause, whatever its rugby administrators may say or do.

This could be of benefit if there is the likelihood of boycotts of New Zealand sports teams at international events such as the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh next year. Unlike the situation in 1976, when the All Blacks were last in South Africa, perhaps unlike, the situation when the Springboks toured New Zealand in 1981, there can be no doubt in 1985 of New Zealand’s official displeasure towards sporting contact with a country where Government is overtly based on race. Those, in New Zealand who oppose the tour might reflect that they have no need now to demonstrate to others, here or abroad, the strength of antiSouth Africa sentiments in New Zealand. That has been done by the Government. Behind the strident voices speaking for and against the tour, the original cause of the outcry is easily forgotten. Those opposed to the tour maintain that any sports contact with the South Africans somehow comforts and sustains the South African political and social system. Many of those who support the tour maintain that sports tours by teams from societies where rigid race rules do not apply can help to encourage reform in South Africa. The evidence is surely that sports contacts, or their absence, make little difference either way inside South Africa. A degree of integration has taken place in South African sport; some of that can be attributed to attitudes from abroad, although it is not clear whether boycotts or visits have done most. Either way, more than a decade of increasing isolation for South . African sportsmen and women has made no significant change in the country’s political system. This is not the core of the matter. The rugby tour to South Africa has become a tussle where appearances are deemed important. To make the tour gives the appearance of supporting apartheid. To have called off the tour would have given the appearance of giving in to threats of violence. Whether these interpretations are correct matters less than that many people believe them to be so. To all people of all races in South Africa, the tour can appear to be, at the very least, a signal of indifference to apartheid, regardless of whether the practice of apartheid is strengthened by the tour. The tour may be seen as more than this: as a positive gesture of support for apartheid, even if the rugby union has no such intention. The rugby union could have said: “We know that we could go; but we shall not.” This would have disposed of the threat and dictation element. The council, instead, has said, in effect: “We can go; and we shall go.” New Zealand will be the worse off for this; and the people who made this decision, and pushed for it, must be counted not to care: a black mark for rugby, a disservice to New Zealand, and no service to South Africa.