Philip Recordon, pictured in 2003: 'I was never a believer in bridge building through rugby.' Photo / NZME
Philip Recordon, pictured in 2003: 'I was never a believer in bridge building through rugby.' Photo / NZME
During Phil Recordon’s 20 years as a District Courtjudge in Auckland from 2003, many of the people he dealt with may not have been aware that the self-effacing man on the bench, who died last week aged 75, had been a central figure in the most controversial case involving sport ever heard in New Zealand.
In 1985, Recordon - then a 27-year-old lawyer - and his fellow lawyer, Paddy Finnigan, took the then New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) to court, saying that a proposed All Blacks tour to apartheid South Africa that year should be stopped.
The chaos of the ′81 Springbok tour of New Zealand, and a direct order from Prime Minister David Lange to cancel the ′85 tour, hadn’t swayed the NZRU, who ploughed ahead regardless.
But with the aid of a brilliant legal team, led by Queen’s Counsel Ted Thomas, the two young, rugby-loving lawyers succeeded.
Six days before the All Blacks were due to leave, Judge Maurice Casey granted an interim injunction against the tour - and the NZRU soon cancelled it.
There was outrage from tour supporters. Recordon received death threats. The most common complaint was that “two bloody lawyers with nothing to do with rugby” had robbed the All Blacks of a lifetime goal, to beat the Springboks in South Africa.
In fact, the pair were deeply involved in the game. Finnigan was coaching at the Auckland University club. The reality with Recordon, as I discovered during a friendship that began two decades ago when we met at the Ponsonby club, was that his love of rugby was bone-deep. But so was his outrage about injustice and inequality.
In 2019, he told me that his feelings about apartheid and rugby began when he was a pupil at St Kentigern College.
During his last year at school, he followed the 1965 Springboks tour of New Zealand. “By then I knew that the players in the all-white team didn’t look like the vast majority of South Africans. It wasn’t just the inequality, it was also the fact South Africa was a police state and we’d see things from over there, pictures of police violence in Soweto. I’d always hated police states.”
Violence in Soweto in the 1970s. Photo / Getty Images
He was, he said, always “fanatical about rugby”. He was a midfield back in an Eastern Suburbs team that included a future All Black, wing Jon McLaughlan.
Studying at Auckland University at the height of the anti-Vietnam protest movement in the late-1960s was a factor in strengthening his views about fairness in society, and rugby contact with South Africa.
“I never joined an organisation, which was probably beneficial with the case in ′85. But I’d always sympathised with the aims of Hart [Halt All Racist Tours] and Care [Citizens Association for Racial Equality] and John Minto [then a leader with Hart] has always been one of my heroes, and remains so.”
The ′81 tour cemented his feelings.
His French-born wife, Genevieve, and Recordon were living in France and England during the tour.
“We were hugely surprised at what was going on, at the ferocity of the argument, the violence, the fact the country was so clearly split.
“At the same time I was very aware of the people in South Africa who had lost their lives in resisting the discrimination. I was so angry that the All Blacks were saying, ‘come and play rugby against us, even though you’re a racially organised rugby union’. It was blatant insensitivity to whatever we were trying to do to bring some sort of equality and justice to South Africa.
“I was never a believer in bridge-building through rugby. Never.”
There was also what Recordon believed was damage done by the ′81 tour to Kiwi attitudes to the police.
“New Zealand police had always been put up on a pedestal for good reasons. Generally there’s a lack of corruption, and they’re hard-working and honest. They still are.
Demonstrations during the 1981 Springboks tour split the nation. Photo / John Sefton
“But I think things did change then. Some of the police squads became household names. The average man or woman in the street saw things that made them think, ‘ooh, that’s not right’. So we didn’t trust them as we had before.”
In 1985, the basic premise of the case to block the All Blacks tour was that the NZRU was acting against its own constitution, which said the union must act in the best interests of the game.
“When we all met up, as a group of lawyers, we all had different jobs to do. We had people look at statistics, at the loss of community support after ′81, the loss of sponsors, like the Apple and Pear Board. We had support from the North Harbour Rugby Union, with their chairman, Chris Kennings, prepared to give evidence about the loss of junior players. All but one of the clubs in North Harbour was against the ′85 tour. It was all recorded and it was all accurate.
“We felt that if we could establish that black people would be injured or killed if we went there in ′85 it may be something we could use to persuade a court to intervene.”
Ultimately, with the All Blacks just days away from assembling and flying out, there wasn’t time to call a host of witnesses.
“In the court in Wellington, we had piles of affidavit evidence stacked up, on every available surface. It was all real, but partly it was for show, to show that we had people who were supporting us.”
On Saturday July 13, the news broke that Justice Casey had ruled that the tour had to be postponed. There was a brief flurry when senior players suggested the squad travel unofficially, but that idea soon petered out. On Friday July 17, the NZRU announced officially that the tour was cancelled.
Murray Mexted scores for the Cavaliers against the Springboks. Photo / NZ Herald
It’s typical of the man’s modesty that years later, Recordon felt a tinge of embarrassment how, after protestors like John Minto and Trevor Richards - often in the face of violent retaliation - had laid the groundwork, it was “smartass lawyers” who were able to actually stop the tour. “I know that’s not how it was, but that’s how it felt to me.”
As much as Recordon played down the role he and Paddy Finnigan played, they did change history. After a rebel Cavaliers tour to South Africa in 1986, the All Blacks did not play South Africa again until 1992, after apartheid was abolished.
