MAORIS VERSUS BRITISH ISLES TACTICS PROVOKED STRONG CRITICISM

Te Ao Hou, December 1959, Page 48

MAORIS VERSUS BRITISH ISLES TACTICS PROVOKED STRONG CRITICISM by TERRY McLEAN As the Rugby match between the British Isles and New Zealand Maoris came to an end at Eden Park, Auckland, early in September, I heard a number of leading Maori Rugby administrators telling each other: “This is a great day for us. Maori Rugby is on the way back.” This sentiment was also the theme of speeches which extolled the Maoris' achievement in denying the Lions a try and in carrying them to a score of only 12 points to 6. So far as one could discover, most Maori Rugby people were delighted with the events of the day. I wish I could agree with this viewpoint. Unfortunately, I cannot rid my mind of a particular thought. It seemed to me at the time, and it has seemed since, that the New Zealand Maori team which played the Lions committed a cardinal sn: It did not play Maori Rugby. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to go all the way back to the most remarkable of Maori teams—perhaps the most remarkable of all Rugby teams—the 1888 Native team which played 108 matches around the world. It is valueless now to compare the Rugby of today with that of this remote time when the try counted one point and it was the custom for the forwards to cluster over the ball and maul incessantly for it. But if tradition is correct, the foundations of Maori-style Rugby were laid by that team and on them were built, down the years, the teams of Maoris, or the individual Maori players, who have contributed so tremendous a portion to the glory of New Zealand Rugby. Before the Great War, as only one example, Billy Stead, who died last year, was not only captain and vice-captain of New Zealand—he was of course, second-in-command to David Gallaher in the 1905 Incomparables—but he was also regarded as one of the cleverest and most graceful five-eighths who ever drew breath. It was in my presence that Jimmy Hunter, the five-eighths of the 1905 All Blacks and one of the greatest of all players, put his arm around Stead and said: “Without you, I would have been nothing. You were the finest of all.” Billy, of course, had Maori blood and many an amusing story he could tell of experiences later in his career when he took charge of Maori teams. But the point was that the great qualities of his play—wisdom, cleverness and sharpness—were Maori qualities. When that terrible war had ended, New Zealand Rugby enjoyed ten years of a Golden Era. Comparatively speaking, New Zealand Rugby was stronger at that stage then it has ever been. And who were principal contributors to the greatness? For my money, they would include George Nepia, Jimmy Mill, Jackie Blake, Albert Falwasser, Sam Gemmell, Jimmy Walker, Peina Taituha, Wattie Barclay, Dick Pelham, Willie Shortland and a host, an absolute host, of other fine players. Need I tell you that these men were Maoris? Need I recall to you their alertness, their superb technical skill, above all their adventurousness? It was because of these qualities that they were great players. It was because of these qualities, too, that New Zealand Rugby of the time was great. On to the thirties, to Charlie Smith and Ropa Watson, Tori Reid, Jack Hemi and Phillips and Tommy Chase and many more. And pass from there onto the forties and the fifties. Do I need to mention more than those magic initials, “J.B.?” And what about Peter Smith, his brother, “Brownie” (“The Big Horse”) Cherrington, Barry Beazley, Keith Davis, Johnny Isaacs, and a whole heap more? In all of these periods, so I maintain, you will find that Maori players and, very often, Maori teams have set the main so far as outstanding performances have been concerned. Auckland on a Saturday afternoon in winter is a pretty staid sort of place—but not when the Barbarians are playing a Maori team. And when a brother of mine encountered Sam Gemmell outside Eden Park one day practically weeping with pleasure, it wasn't because of some Pakeha quality. Sam had just seen the young Keith Davis playing for Auckland against Australia and he couldn't get it out of his mind that another Jimmy Mill had arrived. Would Mill and Nepia and Johnny Smith and Wattie Barclay have tolerated the kind of Rugby which New Zealand Maoris played against the Lions? The answer was put into the mouth of one of his female characters by Bernard Shaw—“Not—likely.” That's what I found so difficult to understand about the match. These last few years, and especially during the Lions' visit, New Zealand Rugby people have grizzled their heads off about the defensive aspects of Pakeha football. No one takes a chance, you can easily guess what's coming because no one can think of anything unusual to do and the game plods wearily up and down the touchline. Is this Maori Rugby? No, no, I say, a thousand times no.

Yet this was the sort of Rugby which was played in the name of the Maori people against the Lions. That was the disappointment, the lasting disappointment of the day. I know very well that Maori Rugby suffered in pride from the mauling by the Springboks in 1956 (and I have always thought that the Maoris that day permitted themselves to be talked into the wrong state of mind). But what happened three years ago was unimportant in 1959. It was a certainty that if the Maoris had played Maori Rugby, the Lions would have replied in kind. Then you almost certainly would have seen the game of a lifetime, furiously fast, spectacular, tremendously exciting. Apart from the score, was there anything exciting about the game as it was played—I am forgetting the tough stuff and other incidentals? To my mind, there wasn't. For the sake both of Maori and New Zealand Rugby, I can only plead for the return, as soon as possible, of truly Maori players. These are the chaps who make your hair stand on end because of the mistakes they make—but by golly, look at the way they cover up those mistakes and look, too, at the things they do with the ball in hand! Raureti, Mathison, Walters, Herewini, Davis—these chaps can really play, and revel in, Maori-style Rugby. Somehow, I can't help feeling that Tom French