Whither Maori Rugby

Tu Tangata, Issue 9, 1 December 1982, Page 17

Whither Maori Rugby

By TERRY McLEAN

a background to Rugby's special affinity for the Maori

Thirty-two years passed between the pioneering tour of the 1888 Native Rugby team captained by Joe Warbrick and the visit to France, England and Wales by the 1926 team captained by Wattie Barclay. Fifty-six years passed between the tour by Barclay and his men and the brief tour to Wales and Spain by Paul Quinn and his team in October-November, 1982. The question is, Why should the interval between the second and third tours have been so long? It is not sufficient to suggest that World War Two was the cause. The Great War of 1914-18 in which Barclay, serving with the Pioneer or Maori Battalion, was awarded the Military Medal catastrophically intervened between

the tours of Warbricks’ and Barclay’s teams. The long delay between the second and third great Maori tours was not, therefore, a product of war. The cause was, it may be asserted, politics. One New Zealand Rugby Council after another set its face against providing New Zealand Maoris teams more than annual inter-district matches at home and occasional visits to the South Pacific. While Maoris clamoured for more, councillors resisted. The conflict was painfully mirrored in a discussion which soon turned into an argument between the chairman of the council, Jack Sullivan, and the living legend of Maori and world Rugby, George Nepia. Having attended the funeral of the cap-

tain of the 1924 All Blacks, Cliff Porter, the two were among others in Sullivan’s office where they saluted the dead man. It was an emotional day for Nepia. When aged 19, he had been chosen either by a stroke of genius or out of despair, as the fullback for Porter’s team. He had been a fiveeights. He had no experience of fullback. He was, in the finest sense, a simple man of fine loyalties, infinite courage and, as was to be proved, technical excellence. Porter, one of the wisest and most mature of all All Black captains, took the shy and faltering boy under his special care. For the rest of his life, Geroge idolised Cliff. He still does. When, therefore, Sullivan, probably

unthinkingly, chose this sad occasion to tell Nepia that it had become the policy of the Rugby Council to phase out Maori Rugby as such, he was unfortunate. Nepia reacted for two reasons. He felt sorrow for the loss of Porter. As a great player, a great Maori player, a NgatiPorou, he had unfathomable pride in Maori Rugby. As Nepia afterwards recounted this experience in 1976, he made it plain that he had violently opposed any idea, as was implicit in Sullivan’s statement, that Maori Rugby should lose that special identity which had been established when Warbrick’s team, which contained 22 Maoris and four Pakehas and which played 107 matches around the world in 11 months, became the vast and immovable foundation-stone of all of New Zealand Rugby.

But there was no question that, during the 19705, perhaps later, certainly before, members of the Rugby Council were opposed to Maori Rugby as a special part of New Zealand Rugby. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to discover the reasons for this attitude.

Certainly there were embarrassments when at McLean Park in 1921 the Maoris were beaten by the first Springboks to tour New Zealand by 9 points to 8. The game was bitter. A refereeing decision which yielded the winning South African try was claimed to be a blunder. Within a day or two, a sensation was caused by the publication of the contents of a cable despatched by a South African journalist named Blackett to newspapers in his homeland. His report that it was “bad enough Springboks having to play a team officially designated New Zealand natives but spectacle thousands of Europeans frantically cheering on a band of coloured men to defeat members of own race was too much for Springboks who (were) frankly disgusted” was taken up in Parliament and in the editorial columns of newspapers. Many years later, a petition was lodged by the Arawa that no match be arranged between the Maoris and the Springboks of 1937. For the first but assurdly not the last time in New Zealand Rugby, New Zealanders, Maori and pakeha, became vividly aware of the problems of racism.

publicity unprecedented

When the third Springboks toured, in 1956, the Maoris were included in the itinerary. The match was played at Eden Park. Publicity was unprecedented. It was said that haka partys, thousands strong, intended to converge on the park to cheer on the Maoris. Since this was the year in which New Zealand Rugby was determined to avenge the defeat of Fred’s All Blacks, four tests to nil, in 1949, it was also said that the Maoris would make mincemeat long pig perhaps? of the Springboks.

In the event, the match was a disaster. The Maoris were beaten by 37 to nil. No side representing the race had ever before played so badly. In the dressing-room after the game, the captain of the team, Stanley, or “Tiny”, Hill, an All Black from Canterbury, said to an All Black selector, Aurther Marslin: “There were a lot of frightened Maori forwards out there today”. Never a man to waste words, Marslin snapped back: “Yes, ‘Tiny’, all eight of them”.

That fixture undoubtedly was a generating cause of a growing belief among councillors that New Zealand Rugby would be better, or improved, or made more easily manageable, if Maori Rugby as such was phased from the game. The belief insidiously spread, councillor to councillor, province to province. When, in most years, the annual Prince of Wales Cup fixtures yielded financial losses, pakehas tended to say that New Zealand Rugby couldn’t continue to shoulder the financial burdens of Maori Rugby. When a famous Maori halfback, Manahi Paewai, whose mana had been extended when he qualified for a medical degree, said in 1971, about the time that the Maoris played the British Lions at Eden Park, that the time had come for Maori Rugby to give up its identify, pakeha administrators said to each other: “We told you so.” The resistance to a large-scale tour by a Maori team to elsewhere than the Pacific or, perhaps Australia, strengthened.

To do them justice, senior pakeha administrators appreciated the importance of the Maoris to New Zealand Rugby. As will be well remembered, resentment had developed among both Maoris and pakehas at the exclusion of Maoris from All Black teams chosen for tours of South Africa. When Allen’s team set off, Johnnie Smith, the greatest Maori player of the time Paewai, given the opportunity, may have proved even greater spoke for many Maoris when he said he did not resent the exclusion of his people from the team. South Africans, Smith implied, were entitled to set their own qualifying standards.

bitterly disputed

Within ten years, such a view was being bitterly disputed. On the eve of an All Black South African tour of 1960 which was captained by Wilson Whinerary and coached by none other than Jack Sullivan, a Wellington surgeon, Rolland O’Regan set going a campaign, “No Maoris, No Tour’’. Thousands tumbled to join in. Maoris and pakehas marched side by side, in protest at the exclusion of members of their race. The campaign was unsuccessful, at least in the public eye. But in Johannesburg during the tour, a dramatic meeting was staged between, on the one hand, the South African Rugby Board led by Dr Danie Craven

and, on the other, by representatives of the Dominions Cuthbert Hogg and Tom Pearce of New Zealand, Wylie Breckenridge of Australia supported by the all-powerful figure of British Rugby, Bill (later Sir William) Ramsay. Bluntly were the South Africans told: “Never again will All Black teams tour South Africa unless Maoris are leigible for places in the side.”

As a point of interest, Mr O’Regan never again took part in anti-South Africa movements. He had a short answer for questioners. He had set out, he said, to break down apartheid in New Zealand Rugby. His movement had succeeded. It was not its business to tell other countries how to run their affairs. All too seldom has the wisdom of this statement been appreciated.

Meanwhile, it was clear that politics of a sort were the cause of the decline in the prestige of Maori Rugby as this was appreciated by the New Zealand Rugby Union. A momentous event occurred in the early 19705. For many years before and during World War Two, the representative of the Maori Advisory Board on the union had been Mr Kingi Tahiwi, a respected figure. Ralph Love, who succeeded him, was a warmhearted enthusiast who sometimes let his heart rule his head. As preparations were being made for the 1960 All Blacks’ tour, Love told a meeting of the Rugby Council that in effect, he was in favour of apartheid. Perhaps he was misreported. Perhaps what was printed did not quite get the gist of his remarks. But it was not an easy remark to stomach; and may have been held against Ralph, who in his time was elected Mayor of that passionate place of Rugby, Petone, when a contender appeared for the appointment of Maori Advisory Board representative on the Rugby Council. In the voting, Love was defeated and a 1947-49 All Black fiveeights, Ben Couch, succeeded him.

made coach About the same time, one of the greatest of all Maori footballers, Waka Nathan, was made coach of the national Maori team. The conjunction of Couch and Nathan in the top jobs could not have been more significant, or successful. Couch, who ran shearing contracts among other concerns and who, as a Mormon, neither drank nor smoked, displayed a consistent tenacity in putting before councillors a sound and reasoned defence of the cause of Maori Rugby.

At the general election in 1975, he achieved the distinction, as a Maori, of winning the pakeha seat of Masterton. He was made Minister of Maori Affairs. As such, his strength on the council was improved. His view now carried considerable weight. Who could hope to tell a Cabinet Minister, whose status was more significant because he was representing pakehas, that Maoris as such were no longer worthy of a special place in New Zealand Rugby?

Beyond this, Nathan as man and player and, as was to be proved, as coach had a mystical appeal for all in Rugby, Maori and pakehas, for all in New Zealand, if it came to that. Twice, while touring in the British Isles with All Black teams, he had suffered a broken jaw. His humour unimpaired, he returned after each convalescence to demonstrate amazing, even ideal, qualities as a flying wing-forward, a fearsome flanker they called “The Black Panther”.

In association with Couch, Nathan had charge of the 1973 Maori team which played in Western Samoa, Tonga and Fiji. Such was the fierceness of play in Western Samoa that the Prime Minister of the country had to go onto the field. The contests in the two tests in Fiji were strong. Tane Norton, the captain, who had played in lan Kirkpatrick’s All Blacks in the British Isles and France in 1972-73, the tour always remembered for the expulsion of Keith Murdoch, said the contests in the front row and he was not talking of foul or dirty play were the toughest, the most strenuous, he had ever encountered. The Maoris got home in both.

The tour was tremendously important. It restored the faith of the Maoris in their own players, their own style of Rugby. Couch in administration and Nathan in coaching continued to expand this faith. They were a great team, one of the great teams. Unbelievably, the Rugby Council did not catch on to the significance of Nathan’s achievements. He had retired from playing only a few years before he became the Maoris’ coach. But, as his record proved, he succeeded. He got through to the players. They respected his judgment, obeyed his will and were encouraged to think for themselves, to display their natural skills, their Maori skills.

Meanwhile, the Council continued to appoint to All Black selection committees and as coaches, men whose playing-days lay back in the 19505. These men did not communicate as naturally as Nathan to the players they were coaching. The 1970 s were not a good period in New Zealand Rugby at international level, not, at least, until the advent of a captain of exceptional qualities in Graham Mourie. Perhaps the appointment of men of similar qualifications to Nathan’s, even the appointment of Nathan himself, would have averted many problems.

not all faults

Not all of the faults lay with the largely pakeha administration. In the early 19605, at a time when Neil McPhail was convenor of the New Zealand selection committee and coach of all All Blacks, a Prince of Wales Cup match was played in Whangarei. A cloudburst descended on the field in the

second half. Men, women and children among the spectators were saturated. A representative Maori team was to be chosen after the game. McPhail was ex officio chairman of the selection committee. But when, having changed his sopping clothes at his own hotel, he caught up with the Maori selectors, they blithely told him they had already chosen their team. They laughed, as did many Maoris when they heard the story.

But it was a slim trick. It did not improve the standing of Maori Rugby at national council level. At that time, and for some years later, it was also a fact that tribalism was an unfortunate feature of Maori Rugby at administrative and selection levels. With good reason was it considered that not all Maori teams were chosen on merit. As this belief it was more than a belief, it was a fact spread through senior pakeha administrations, the standing of Maori Rugby was lessened. To be frank, the Maoris in Rugby were not always their own best friends.

But the attitude expressed by Jack Sullivan to George Nepia and which was shared by a good many at council and provincial union level was subtly changing. Enormous was the victory won when the South African Government acknowledged that Maoris would be welcomed if they were judged good enough, on playing merit, to win selection in the 1970 All Blacks who were to tour in South Africa. The pioneers were Sid Going, Henare Milner, and Blair Furlong; and Bryan Williams, partSamoan and the sensational player of the tour was also a “coloured” man who would not previously have been allowed into an All Black team. Going went back to South Africa with the team in 1976, as did other Maoris in Terry Mitchell, Tane Norton, Bill Osborne, Kent Lambert and Billy Bush. Since that was the year in which Nepia and Sullivan had staged their quarrel, it might have seemed odd that Maori Rugby was to be phased out when 20 per cent of a touring All Black team were members of the race.

big tour

By means of sustained pressures, tne cause of a “big” Maori tour was promoted. One suggestion was of the Pacific, to Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. Another was the Pacific Coast of North America, to British Columbia and California. Fortunate were the Maoris, fortunate was New Zealand, that a leading member of the Welsh Rugby Union, Ken Harris, was a powerful friend. As treasurer, he held a position of strength comparable with that held by the great Sir William Ramsay for so many years in the Rugby Football Union of England. Long before the public announcement, Harris said that the only country Wales could possibly invite to share in its union’s centenary celebra-

tions in 1980 was New Zealand. It was he, too, who played a major part in the negotiations which produced the 1982 Maori tour to Wales. (The Spanish appendage came later). Fairly might it be claimed that the mounting of the tour to Wales put an end, into the foreseeable future, of moves to put an end to Maori Rugby as such. It was not easy. Many a pakeha saw a New Zealand Maori team as an instrument of apartheid. What was the difference, it was asked, between an all-Maori team in New Zealand and an all-White team in South Africa? Was it not true, too, that South Africa has opened the gates. Coloureds and Blacks were now capable of competing for places in merit-selected Springbok teams. It is strange, and saddening, to reflect upon the number of pakeha New Zealanders who resent the continuance of New Zealand Maori teams. Most, it is clear, have been incapable of appreciating the impact and value of bi-cul-turalism in the development of New Zealand as a nation. “How lucky have we been”, said an eminent Rhodes Scholar a pakeha “that we have been able to grow up, as two races, side by side”. Sixty years after the event at McLean Park in Napier which revealed

for New Zealanders the colour-bar problem of White South Africans, a New Zealand Maori team captained by Billy Bush had all the better of a Springbok team captained by Wynand Claassen. Lucky indeed were the Springboks to struggle to a last-minute draw, 12-12 when a drop goal by their flyhalf, Colin Beck, was adjudged by the referee to have passed inside the far upright when in the opinion of thousands of spectors it had passed outside. But it was a great match, in Rugby terms it was the best of the tour. Frank Shelford at flanker played a game such as no spectator would ever forget. While he roamed, devastatingly, his seven companions in the pack stuck together like glue, taking on, holding on and bettering a huge and powerful Springbok pack in the close-quarter player. The Springboks came off the field, clasping the shoulders of their opponents. This was Rugby of the rarest vintage. Alas, the background to the tour was dangerous and depressing. Many New Zealanders of all races disputed that the Springboks should have been invited. They believed, most of them with great sincerity, that a nation which practised apartheid as a political fact and which denied citizens born within its borders the rights of citizenship

because of the colour of their skins neither Asians, nor Coloureds, nor Blacks of the eight principal national groups, Zulu, Xhose, Venda and so on, are permitted citizenship, though almost 20,000,000 of them were born in South Africa should not be permitted membership of the world fraternity of sport. More sinister was the development of powerful forces which used opposition to the tour as a cloak for opposition to the Government of the country. By the last stages, when the Springboks played Auckland and New Zealand, a week apart, at Eden Park, these various groups, were combined into organisations defiant of authority and prepared to indulge in civil disorder or racist assembly to state their point of view. They wore motor-cycle helmets. They carried sticks and stones. Some were of a “Patu” force. They clashed, violently, with police. Many were arrested and charged before District Courts. The nation was inflamed. It would be pointless to dissect the arguments for and against actions and persons which disturbed the peace. But it could not pass notice that a substantial number of demonstrators were Maoris. Would this fact, one was left to wonder, disturb the cause of Maori Rugby?