Form of All Black Team is Assessed by Springbok Authority

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27120, 30 June 1949, Page 9

Form of All Black Team is Assessed by Springbok Authority

Written by H. B. Heartland for the Daily Times By Air Mail EAST LONDON, June 14. The All Blacks are going through a period of travail as they strive to produce their best form and struggle to scrape home in their matches. But if big Jim Parker, Alec McDonald and Fred Allen have been worried they have not let anybody know about it as they have never failed to present smiling facies. The tourists might have lost three of their four matches, and had that happened, I imagine it would have been about the most startling surprise in the whole history of New Zealand sport. They managed to hold oyt to beat Eastern Province and to me they were always the better side but, nevertheless, it was a smatch of lost chances so far as the home team was concerned.

Gordon Jordaan, one of the best kicks in the country, only converted one of four penalties, of which the longest was 45 yards, and among other escapes agile young Billy Sendm, son of the 1921 Springbok centre in New Zealand, broke through and passed to the wing, who lost possession of the ball as he dived over the corner.

self into form and McHugh and Harvey are also fine rucking forwards. _ The flankers are showing promising ability and collectively the. team has everything for a solid, cohesive pack. Every one of the backs, without exception, has turned on good performances. Bob Scott is an unruffled character at full-back who has yet _to produce his best placekicking form. There is no doubt that he has a fine sense of positional play, but he was caught twice in possession at Port Elizabeth and in those incidents he was a little slow. Of the younger players, Neville Black played admirably in his second outing and he looks like developing into an admirable orthodox fly-half, giving his outsides every opportunity. Keith Gudsell’s giant side-step and general play make him a dasher, while the cool and experienced play of Jim Kearney was of untold value to the side in recent hard games. The wings have not had a chance yet in attack but they have never been beaten in defence. Peter Henderson has none of the nervousness generally associated with ! the track man on the rugger field and he made some spirited runs against Eastern Province. His well-controlled crosskick will earn tries before long.

This All Black side has two distinct weaknesses which it must overcome n it is to realise its full possibilities. The hooking is very weak and much below the general South African- standard, while the scrum-halves are slow 1 m finding their form. Bill Conrad made his debut against South-westerns, and there was distinct promise in his play. He fields closer to the scrum than Savage, and he has a longer pass.

• Conrad, of course, is an exponent of the dive pass,, and since he is a young player he seizeu the opportunity of having a chat with Danie Craven when the latter, as a South African selector, was present at the Oudtshoom match. Danie. the great master of the dive pass and nowadays director of physical education at Stellenbosch University, where he takes charge of Rugby, explained to the young New Zealander that he was starting his divp with his body instead of getting the impetus from his legs. That, will probably be a useful tip. Much more encouraging, however, was the play of Larry Savage against Eastern Province. In this game his form took an upward bound. His passing improved, and he was no mere purveyor of passes, as for the first time on the tour he showed individuality and stole away from the scrum in the most effective way on more than one occasion. It was his clever opportunism when his vis-a-vis, Jordaan, fumbled and he pounced on the ball to foot through that made McHugh’s try. Both Savage and Conrad, who is big and wants a lot of play, are likely to prove • better than many of us imagined before the tour is much older, and by the time the tests arrive I do not think they will let the team down. \ *

The best tribute I can pay to the wings, however, is to repeat a bantering remark made by Bill Schreiner, chairman of the South African Selection Committee, to Fred Allen after the Port Elizabeth match. “Fred,” he said, “when you have selected your best two wings for the tests you might turn over the worst of the others to play for South Africa.”

This back division will strike its real form before long unless I am badly mistaken, and I think there may be a shock or two in store for South Africa.

The hooking is a far more serious problem. Hass Catley may solve it when he is able to play, but I think the weakness is more a matter of method than individual ability. Norman Wilson looks a good young forward, and I understand that he was hooker in the Otago team, which had the distinction of having the outstanding scrummaging pack in representative football in New Zealand last season. One can only account for his being out-hooked by the South-west-erns, which, frankly, is the weakest provincial side in the country, by the fact that he was ill with ’flu at the time. , , , , Not only was Wilson out-hooked, but in one period of the game the South-westerns heeled from 13 successive scrums. Wilson’s opponent, H. Pienaar, was a 42-year-old veteran who was playing in his eighty-second reg resentative game, and in all the time e has been playing he has never been- regarded as better than a moderate in his position judging by best provincial standards. " So far as I can gather, the trouble is technical. In a New Zealand scrum, the job of hooking is left entirely to the hooker. As South Africans have now polished their scrum methods, the two props, as you call the. other..front rankers, play their part, and when the ball is thrown in they swing their inside feet to he*’.p trap the ball. Moreover, the New Zealand flankers seem to deliver a straight push, whereas in the South African scrum the whole push is converged on the hooker, with the flankers .pushing inwards. This, of course, is dealing with the matter ■in sketchy terms, but altogether there is no doubt that the South Africans have made a much wider study of scrummaging than the New Zealanders who, I seem to remember, have generally won their games, despite rarely obtaining a fair division of the ball from the tight scrums. Having spread the unpleasant news. I can turn to happier aspects of the tour, and 1 would not have you think that I have yet changed my optimistic views of the All Blacks’ prospects of putting up an exceptional record on this tourX 1 am more' satisfied than ever that this touring side is extremely rich in gifted players at the back of the scrum. If they escape defeat in the next week they should build into the best touring side -we have seen in the Union, but again I must make the evident point that the greatest backs cannot score without the ball. In general phases of play, 'your forwards are getting better every day. The matches have been played in most unseasonably hot weather, which has made play rather exhausting, but the punishment the big fellows have had to take has helped them to shed some of the weight they had put on since last-'season and which was probably no good to them. Harry Frazer locks the best forward to date and he played like a champion at Oudtshoorn where he had a hand in every scoring movement and actually initiated two of them. Lauchie Grant has also shown himself an exceptional line-out forward and the play of these two fine forwards has helped a lot to discount lack of possession from the set scrupis. Ray Dalton is playing him-