I’ve decided to bookmark it at reddit.com with your title: Heart breaking | and your Web address: http://blogs.sport24.co.za/mclook/2012/10/06/heart-breaking/. I hope this is fine with you, I’m attempting to
give your good blog a bit more coverage. Be back soon.

Could it be simply me or does it give the impression like some of these remarks come across like they are
written by brain dead people? And, if you are writing at
additional online social sites, I’d like to follow everything fresh you have to post. Would you list of every one of all your public sites like your twitter feed, Facebook page or linkedin profile?

I always enjoy your views but this response I rate as a splendid one; probably your best one so far. If it was a sermon it might have made me a believer .

Quite right! I was bloody pissed off when this issue was played out in the NZ media three years ago during the centenary of Maori Rugby, and, yet again, Doc Craven was (wrongly) fingered as a sinister Machievallian figure in the pre-match talk he gave to the Maori side.

Due to hazy memories and tall stories, and half-baked recollections and rumours about what had happened in the 1921 match between the 2 sides and the subsequent and the infamous leaked Blackett telegram,…

and the omission of Maori players such as George Nepia, Jimmy Mill, Johnny Smith, Vince Bevan and Ben Couch from the 1928 and 1949 All Black teams to South Africa,…

and because it was a game of rugby (physical contact) between white South Africans (coming from a country with apartheid),…

and Maori, who were a people with a history of physical courage, who did not take kindly to being treated as second-class by anyone, especially in their own country, …

and due to the intensely physical, sometimes dirty play that had characterised the tour to that point (Kevin Skinner had played for the All Blacks just a few days before),…

and fanned by idiots like Niehaus…

it was the PUBLIC who put 2 and 2 together, until it added up to 17, and talk starting circulating that it was going to be a blood bath of a game. Just a few days after the Maori game Jan Pickard famously stood up in a pub in Rotorua and loudly promised that Kevn Skinner was going to be carried off the field when the Springboks played against Skinner’s provincial team in the next tour game. That boast soon became common knowledge all over the country…

As a result, the Maori representative on the NZRFU, Ralph Love probably initiated the talk to the Maori team by government minister Corbett (who, even though he was Minister of Maori Affairs, was not Maori), and then Craven himself. Love also spoke to the Maori team, and also made an announcement to the crowd a few minutes before kick off, stressing that good behaviour was expected, and that it was a sporting contest, nothing more.

The motives behind all these actions were NOT to discourage the Maori team. Instead, EVERYONE, politicians, administrators, journalists, players, and public, KNEW there was an elephant in the room – the hope that Maori players would be included in the 1960 All Black team that was scheduled to tour South Africa. IF the game DID degenerate into a racial-inspired brawl, then what chance there was for Maori touring in 1960 would disappear.

Craven, while always doing what was best for South African rugby (which included having All Black teams tour South Africa without Maori players if that was the only way it could be), ALWAYS demonstrated a genuine desire to do what he could to ensure Maori were fully included in the NZ – SA rugby relationship. The man had a doctorate in anthropology when he first toured NZ with the 1937 Springboks, and he would have understood right from that first contact that full Maori participation in NZ rugby and public life was the way it was in NZ. Craven also formed a genuine and abiding friendship with the famous Guide Rangi of Whakarewarewa in 1937, and acquaintanceship with her and her family that was renewed every time he returned to New Zealand in the years after.

So, IF Maori were to have any chance of touring in 1960, and Craven would try and do what he could, the Maori team of 1956 had to ensure it was a clean game so that %$#@holes like Niehaus didn’t have a reason to write inflammatory reports that could spook the South African government – and it was the South African government (and the gutless NZ rugby union which never drew a line in the sand until 1966, by insisting “No Maoris, No Tour”) who would ultimately determine if Maori could tour South Africa.

You are very right that there was something VERY wrong with the way NZ played its rugby in 1956 such that the simple message, “above all else, ensure this is a clean game” was interpreted as “you must lose”. IF you so chose, you could interpret it as an unfair pressure on the Maori team based on their race compared to the other New Zealand teams that played the 1956 Springboks, when, pretty much anything was allowed in other games.

There were repercussions from the humiliating loss the Maori suffered in front of their many supporters in 1956 (and Maori, like South Africans have a proud rugby tradition, and the manner of this loss would have hurt). The next two games the Maori played against touring teams (the 1959 Lions and the 1961 French) were foul, vicious, nasty games, and it seems evident that those teams were motivated to blot of the memory of the allegedly “gutless” performance of 1956.

However, there is no way Doc Craven would expect, let alone ask for charity, especially an opponent deliberately losing a game against his Springboks. Similarly, an All Black would die of shame if there was ever a suggestion that they expected an opponent to deliberately lose. The suggestion simply misunderstands the issues at stake, and the mentality when South Africans and Kiwis play rugby against one-another!

In reality, as happens in most rugby games, if the players had been allowed to get on with it, it would probably have been an excellent and even contest, similar to the 1965 and 1981 games between the same two teams, which were about the best games of those two tours outside of the test matches.

And the NZ rugby union SHOULD have given the firm but polite message to Craven and the SARB to deliver to their government – “thanks for your invitation to tour in 1960, and we know you passionately value our continued rugby contact just as much as we do. However, in New Zealand, we aspire to live together as one people in all things – including our sport. If your system cannot accommodate ALL New Zealanders touring in an All Black team, then regrettably we cannot send any All Black team”.

Whether Maori could have ever toured South Africa in 1928 or 1949 (and I suspect maybe not, but saffers would have a better idea than me), by 1960 there was the beginning of severe strains within New Zealand over the issue. In 1966, when the NZ Rugby Union finally grew a pair of balls and refused to tour in 1967, even an intransigent crook and ratbag like Vorster (who had his plotting dishonest finger prints all over the Basil D’Oliveira affair) was prepared to make changes to the supposedly “inviolable system of apratheid” so that Polynesians could tour in 1970.

Which was an outstanding success, and probably the most popular and closely followed team to ever tour the Republic, with Bryan Williams as the star…

Seriously, I appreciate where you are coming from. There still is a bit of an anti academic attitude in NZ. Post graduate studies for instances is not something students here in NZ aspire too do. The Keys government just recently got rid of funding for post-graduate studies which make it even harder for students too hang on for a few years to complete a post-grad qualification.

In South Africa obtaining a post graduate qualification is the in thing. Unfortunately, our rugby fraternatity are obsessed with size and physicality. Not enough attention is given to skill training. I think it is changing but the ratio is probably still 70 percent gym and 30 percent skill. We see it in the way the players play, 70 percent of the time they try to run through the opponent instead of trying to attack space or using running angles/scissors/off-loads to create openings.

No Lochner as far as I can see never mention it. There is reference to it in the subscripts of quite a few of the newspaper pictures I have of that tour. Lochner eventually got injured and didn’t play in the Maori game and the papers mention that he didn’t play due to injury and not because of the death threats.

Maybe it was just SA newspapers looking for sensation but I’ll keep digging for more info.

Yes, Jarden was often criticised, particularly outside of Wellington, and especially in Canterbury, where he had a long-running (on-field) rivalry with his All Black team-mate, Morrie Dixon. Canterbury represented the intensely-physical smash-and-bash safety-first approach that summarised NZ rugby of the time (they held the Ranfurly Shield from 1953-56), whereas Wellington (and also Auckland, and North Auckland) were one of the few places that valued the skill of a back evading his opponent, rather than taking the tackle to set up a ruck.

For example, this is a description of Jarden by Terry McLean in “Great Days in NZ Rugby” of the 1955 Interisland game played in appalling weather conditions at Athletic Park, Wellington: -

“The deflection of the kick was a matter of a fraction of a second. In that instant, Jarden’s wonderfully acute reaction set him to work. With lightening swiftness, he darted forward. His faultlessly accurate handling stood to him. The ball was in his arms, he was across the line and before Duff’s cohorts could so much as blink an eye the ball was on the ground and Jarden was pressing it down.

It was only fitting Jarden should place the goal…the 12,000 bluenosed spectators cheered everyone; and especially did they cheer the man (Jarden) who has scored nine points, the man whose every appearance in an attack had heightened its dramatic content, the man who would cause hundreds, even thousands to hunger for the inevitable moment, week by week on Athletic Park, when he would perform some extraordinary deed and so send them home, contented”

Jarden placed skill above all others. He used to practise his skills, like side-stepping, and throwing in to the lineout (against the goal post) every lunch time at Athletic Park, such was his “professional” attitude, and desire to perform at his very best potential. In the era, especially to the hard-heads from Canterbury he was viewed as suspect, especially at tackling. The same sort of crap used to get flung from Cantabrians a generation later at another Wellington player who valued and practised skill ahead of mindless physicality and intimidation, Allan Hewson.

For example, Winston McCarthy writes of Jarden,

“When a player becomes a sensation, as was Jarden at the time (after his first All Black tour to Australia in 1951), it is inevitable that he becomes closely marked on the field. In other words instructions are usually given for him to be “sat upon”. But never in my experience have I seen any other player so subjected to early and late tackles and blatant obstruction, both in club and representative games. In 1952, when he was the recipient of all these illegal tactics, it was only natural that Ron should become a trifle uneasy. Trying to live up to his reputation he went looking for opportunities in other parts of the field, quite often with disastrous results to his team; and instead of going into his man he began looking for the interception, giving rise to the opinion that his defence was weak. Then, too. when things did not go his way, even with a missed kick at goal, he indulged in mild doses of histrionics which were greeted with high glee by his critics.” (Winston McCarthy, Rugby in my time, 1958)

Because Jarden was a perfectionist, he seems to have had a perfectionist’s emotional response to disappointment that would have gone down very badly in that time in NZ – it was the time when men especially were discouraged from showing any emotion, especially if they were All Blacks. Whenever you suffered unfairness or a physical beating, the culture insisted you had to stoically and silently endure, or respond with the same methods.

Being an intelligent man and a University student wouldn’t have helped Jarden’s reputation. NZ was so strongly egalitarian and anti-intellectual at the time, Varsity students were viewed as clever-dicks who had too much to say for themselves, and not real men doing real jobs. For example, other than Otago University in Dunedin the influence of Universities in rugby and wider New Zealand life and culture seems to have been much less than institutions such as UCT or Stellenbosch in South Africa.

Which is why Kevin Skinner is the enduring hero of 1956, even over 50 years later amongst people who have only the haziest of knowledge about the tour, and wouldn’t know the name Ron Jarden from a bar of soap. But it seems all Kiwis have heard of Kevin Skinner, and Peter Jones being “absolutely buggered”.

Which is a tragic indictment on the rugby NZ played in 1956, and why it left a legacy of nasty physicality at the expense of skill for years afterwards in our rugby. Jarden may not have had all the physical gifts of later NZ wingers like Bryan Williams, Jonah Lomu, or the other “Polynesian powerhouse wingers” who are common in NZ rugby. But, other than Jeff Wilson (who I don’t think was as psychologically tough), Ron Jarden seems to me to have been about the most skillful winger we ever produced. Any man who could score over 100 first class tries, not to mention many more for Victoria University in the highly competitive Wellington club competition, during an era of such defensive-minded rugby as NZ was in the 1950s must have been a truly great player.

No, I wasn’t aware of that. Was that something Lochner talked about in the years afterwards? I assume it was the actions of some deranged idiot getting too caught up in the win-at-all-costs attitude that underlay the NZ attitude to this tour. We have our own Pieter van Zyls here in NZ too!

Also, and I don’t want to steal your thunder for your next post on the NZ Maori game, but there was a lot of crazy-talk and rumours, and anticipation of a potential blood-bath in NZ Maoris fixture. We’ll leave if for your next post, but over 50 years after the tour, in 2010, poor old long-since-dead Danie Craven who whose 1956 team was subject to so much unreasonable pressure was still being criticised by the NZ media and misrepresented by revisionist agitators with an axe to grind as a racist. If one of his players had received a death threat, then I can quite well understand why he was asked (by NZ rugby officials!) to speak to the Maori team before the game…

I also sense that was the case. Maxwell Price (the SA journo on tour with the team) wrote that they (the Springboks) looked forward to a light opne varsity type game.

SA could still have won the game if they succeeded with all their penalty kicks and conversions. Nevertheless the defence was poor and the forward play a mess indicating a motivation problem.

Fact that Pickard started to talk too the team with no mentioning of Viviers (who was also on the field) indicates a leadership problem in the group.