Rebel tour claim ‘pure speculation’

Press, 6 October 1989, Page 52

Rebel tour claim ‘pure speculation’

PA Wellington The New Zealand Rugby Football Union chairman, Russ Thomas, has dismissed as “more rumours” a claim by an anti-apartheid group, Hart Aotearoa, that All Blacks touring Ireland and Wales would be offered more than $400,000 each to tour South Africa. Hart has written to the union warning the touring players would be approached by South African scouts while on tour. He said he had no plans to do anything about the claim.

In a letter recently to the N.Z.R.F.U., Hart claimed the scouts, said to be from the Transvaal and Natal rugby unions, would try to entice the entire team to South Africa for a fully-fledged tour in March-April next year.

The money to be offered to each player exceeded $400,000, it said.

Mr Thomas said the letter was pure speculation, and while he would perform the courtesy of answering, he would not act on it in any way. “These are just more rumours,” he said. “I have heard such rumours for the past four years while I have been chairman. I hear so many...every day of my life.”

Mr Thomas said he was first approached to respond to such rumours in an official capacity while on tour as manager of the All Blacks in England in 1978.

They were as far from the truth then as they were these days, he said. “According to rumour, this tour was meant to happen last year,” he said.

The letter, copies of which Hart (Halt All Racial Tours) distributed to the news media, said planning for the “rebel” tour had advanced “well

beyond the rumours currently circulating in rugby circles.”

It said for security and publicity reasons, formal contracts would be presented to the players on the forthcoming tour, on the basis that in being out of the country, they would be more “persuadable.” "Action by your union is needed now on behalf of international rugby to head off this pirate challenge,” Hart said. The Hart secretary, John Minto, asked Mr Thomas to seek pledges from the All Blacks to reject such overtures before they reach Britain. Mr Thomas said yesterday he would do no such thing. Neither would he pass on the letter or its contents to the team’s managers.

"They and the players are fully aware of their responsibilities,” he said. “I do not need to remind them.”