Phil Gifford: I hear echoes of 1968 in Black Lives Matters movement

The Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder kneel during the national anthem before an NBA basketball first round playoff game Saturday. Photo / AP

COMMENT:

In October, 1968, I sat on the press bench of the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City and watched in astonishment as Tommie Smith and John Carlos bowed their heads and raised gloved hands in black power salutes at the medal ceremony for the 200 metres.

Six months earlier civil rights icon Martin Luther King had been assassinated in Memphis. The streets of American cities were aflame.

Announcing the expulsion of Smith and Carlos from the Games, the head of the United States Olympic Committee, Doug Roby, said, "The Olympic Games is not a place for demonstrations of any type." The American swimming team manager, Ken Treadway, said he was glad Carlos and Smith had been suspended. "Don't you think they deserve it?" he asked.

Almost 52 years later I hear echoes of the attitude that Roby and Treadway and white American journalists had in Mexico City. They come in the response to the strike of the NBA by leading American basketballers, spurred by the shooting of unarmed black men.

(Thankfully disagreement with NBA players now is more muted that the response in 1968, when Time magazine ran an editorial saying, "Faster, Higher, Stronger is the motto of the Olympic Games. Angrier, nastier, uglier, better describes the scene in Mexico City last week.")

But when race enters arguments over sport there are some constants. In 1981 when an apartheid era Springbok team toured here it was the same.

Basically the major theme boils down to the idea that sportspeople should stick to sport, that it's none of their damn business what's happening in society. That argument in itself deprives one high achieving, usually hard working, group of the right to speak out.

It becomes even worse when someone who hasn't grown up black in America feels the need to basically rebuke the likes of LeBron James for being furious. He shouldn't apparently, be speaking out because he's, you know, rich, and he's, well, damaging the NBA, and, gee, this isn't the right place to make his feelings known.

Members of the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder observe a moment of silence before an NBA basketball first round playoff game Saturday. Photo / AP

We live in New Zealand, where all of us have the right to free expression, and long may that continue. But unless you've grown up black in America, a country where a black man is 2.8 times more likely to be killed while being arrested than a white man, then I can't take seriously suggestions that NBA stars basically have a cheek for taking actions under the Black Lives Matter banner.

On a much happier note, as strange as the setting was, a largely empty Rugby Park in Christchurch, there was something heartwarming about Ranfurly Shield rugby returning with Canterbury playing against a team from North Otago, full of men who looked like the bloke next door.

Despite the 71-7 victory for the professionals of Canterbury over the amateurs from Oamaru, the challengers never threw in the towel, and let's hear it for Josh Hayward, who scored a try in the 70th minute. From the moment he came on as a replacement Hayward was tough and fearless, so when he barged over for a try it was no real surprise.

What made it even more special was that Hayward, born and bred in Oamaru, but now working in Dunedin, was playing his first game of the year. There were injuries in the North Otago squad, and Hayward, a member of last year's Meads Cup winning side, got a late phone call from coach Jason Forrest. "Basically," said North Otago chairman, Warren Prescott, "we were in the crap, and Josh answered the call."

My favourite Ranfurly Shield try of all time was scored in 1989, when the great Auckland side of the time travelled to Paeroa, and beat what will forever, as a Waihi boy, be my home team, Thames Valley, 58-7.

Late in the game the Valley wing, Jack Handley, ran a great angle and sprinted over the line to score. What make the try as world famous in the Valley as Lemon & Paeroa, was that as he ran to the line Jack saw that the last defender, the great first-five Grant Fox, was gamely but futilely chasing him.

With the ball safely under his left arm Handley, a grin all over his face, saluted Fox with two upraised fingers before he plunged over the line.

A decade later at Handley's Paeroa West club I was asked if I'd like to see something special. On the wall was an ancient video tape player and a TV set. One click and the tape showed Handley's run, and, in perfect focus, the moment when he gave Foxy the fingers. "I don't think," a West stalwart told me, "Jack's had to buy a drink in the clubrooms since."