Rugby tour

Press, 5 July 1985, Page 16

Rugby tour

Sir, — Church leaders are doing no good for the name of Christianity by taking sides against our rugby men. It is the same as trade union officials speaking out in public in support of the anti-tour protests. The National Council of Churches, the Catholic Church and the unions cannot represent their members or congregations on controversial political questions. Rank and file unionists and church followers have just as varied an opinion on the rights of rugby players as anyone else. — Yours, etc., CHRIS CHASTON. July 3, 1985.

Sir, — It is regrettable that some players advanced moral grounds for not withdrawing from the All Black team, just when the main churches, whose combined wisdom must make their moral advice worthy of being heeded, were pronouncing against the tour. But it must be conceded that in cases of moral confusion, it is only human nature to opt for what one subconsciously wants to do. From a rugby angle the team, not a stronglooking one, will not have the same motivation as teams in the past, of a feeling of total dedication through representing their whole country instead of a minority as in 1985 — no pep talks or words of good will, no messages of congratulation from their country’s leaders. Those who have thought flong and hard about

the matter are scarcely likely to be any clearer afterwards. If the Rugby Union has not thought about all this, it should have. — Yours, etc VERNON WILKINSON. July 2, 1985. Sir, — Genuine no doubt, but the reason given by Jock Hpbbs and Wayne Smith for making themselves available for the All Black tour is unsound. It is not contact between New Zealand and South Africa that will break down apartheid but rather “meaningful” contact between the South African Government and its disenfranchised people. The African National Congress has been trying for years to get the Government to talk seriously about change. It is now banned. It and other anti-apartheid groups — banned or still legal — say isolation helps their cause by making the Government “turn inwards dn itself,” to use Mr Hobbs’s phrase, and look at its situation. Contact with outsiders bolsters the Government in its policies, which it sees as not costing it international approval. It is naive, at best, or presumptuous for us to tell South Africans fighting for justice what is the best way for them to achieve it. — Yours, etc., A. J. CAMPBELL. July 1, 1985.