Wyn Drabble wishes the All Blacks would all wear the same coloured boots. Photo / AP
Wyn Drabble wishes the All Blacks would all wear the same coloured boots. Photo / AP
All Blacks/Springboks Memories
Watching the All Blacks-Springboks game on Saturday night brought back some early (albeit hazy) memories.
It is possible that the earliest rugby test I witnessed live was the third test between the All Blacks and the Springboks in 1956 at Lancaster Park in Christchurch (but it couldalso have been a different game a few years later).
Anyway, my biggest memory is the fear of that surging mass of supporters on the embankment, of being swept along by the masses on exit. Frightening stuff for a young lad, so frightening I cannot now remember the result.
By 1960, I could recite by heart the names of all the All Blacks and the position they played. And name the province from which they came. I had posters of them up beside my bed on the wallpaper-covered scrim which shivered and shook when the southerly busters came through.
I don't think I understood politics at this stage so remember little of the "No Maoris, No Tour" movement. Just the names of the All Blacks, the position they played and the province from which they came.
I know that Wilson Whineray took an all-white All Black team to South Africa in that year. We would have listened to the games on the wireless and the commentator, I think, could have been Winston McCarthy though he might have retired from radio broadcasting a year or two before this, in which case I cannot remember. I did say hazy.
Anyway, it must have been a very good wireless; it also brought us Peter Snell and Murray Halberg.
I may have been naive about politics in those days but I was musical and clearly remember the Howard Morrison Quartet's parody of a Lonnie Donegan song. "My Old Man's an All Black" received a lot of airplay.
But the 1960 protest was a minnow compared with what was to come during the Springboks' tour of 1981when a pitch invasion caused the cancellation of a game. I was living in Sydney at the time so was a little removed from the seriousness of it all but definitely read news reports about a bit of a fracas.
A big difference between then and now was the quality of the haka. YouTube has some very embarrassing clips of early All Black hakas with blokes just standing around loosely, occasionally slapping a knee or wiggling an arm and looking around at other team members to see what the next move was.
Today it's a different story. The hakas are stirring stuff indeed.
The quality of player and coach interviews has probably stayed at similar levels:
Interviewer: So what's the plan for the second half?
Player or Coach: To get out there and play some footy.
Wyn Drabble
We did go through a stage where the insightful reply would have been preceded by, "Yeah, nah", a phrase that linguists are still trying to explain.
Another significant difference between this 100th All Blacks-Springboks clash and the early ones is in the matter of footwear, and here both teams are equal.
Call me a fuddy-duddy if you will but I simply am not a fan of the players wearing boots of different colours. I have no objections to colour; I just want all team members to wear the same colour. Shoes are, after all, part of their uniform. I'm fine with two-tone yellow and pink as long as they all wear them.
So there, I've had my say and you may be wondering what I thought of the game itself? I can sum it up in one word. Phew!
In fact I believe a draw would have been a fair result.
It only remains for me to say firmly and with conviction, "Yeah, nah".
Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, musician and public speaker.
