How Springbok visits have changed 50 years on

South African forward H.P.J Bekker drinking from a bucket at half time during the 1956 Springbok tour. Herald file picture

Wynne Gray reflects on how visits by the Springboks reflect how rugby - and times - have changed:

THEN - '56

No marketing machine for the Springbok tour (they didn't need one) - Tries worth three points - Good keen men - Winston McCarthy - Three-month tours &'56 '06

NOW - '06

The Pacific Islands influence - The Rugby Channel - Branding - Tattoos - Official website - Eyeliner - The bench - Big bucks - Nightime footy

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Fifty years on. Just as it was all those years ago, in Wellington, the Springboks are facing another critical juncture in their rugby history.

That is the only similarity between the sides with the 2006 Boks searching for some formula to redress the debacle in Brisbane while the 1956 Boks needed a victory to stay in the series against the All Blacks.

This year brings decisive anniversaries for many rugby tours which have entwined New Zealand and South Africa - the 1956, 1981 and 1996 series.

Memories of the '56 series have dulled or not even been lit for the latest generations but for those involved, All Blacks like Robin Archer, Bill Clark, Mark Irwin, Nev MacEwan, Don McIntosh and Pat Walsh (who will attend a reunion lunch today in Wellington), that series against the Springboks is a vivid piece of New Zealand's sporting history.

Everything was so different then. There was a mania about beating the Boks, an unprompted passion for the national cause. The country's demeanour in 1956 was governed by the series. Talk to those who lived, worked and watched through those times and the rugby was a comprehensive magnet.

These days the game is marketed hard, it touches many parts of the nation but does not have the pervasive impact it did 50 years ago.

Watching Rugby Channel reruns of the '56 series, the first impressions are of the tobacco-shrouded sea of spectators at matches, fans who had queued for hours to stand and watch their heroes.

Games could be fairly turgid - grinding slogs on muddied, soft surfaces with plenty of lineouts and kicking, although Winston McCarthy's radio commentaries delivered a crackling atmosphere.

Wings threw the ball in, a try was worth three points, goalkickers used the point of their boots while sides were numbered from the fullback up.

The All Blacks won the first test, the series was at a crossroads at Athletic Park in Wellington on August 4, 1956. The All Blacks' bus edged past the tourists in the snarl of traffic leading to the game and they led early with a try to Ross Brown before the Boks smashed the All Blacks' forward resistance to score two tries and claimed the 8-3 victory in a spiteful game.

The tour was alive before the All Blacks, on the back of Peter Jones' marvellous fourth test try at Eden Park, became the first side in 60 years to beat the Boks in a series.

It was a tour which has stayed with writer Warwick Roger forever. Subsequently he penned Old Heroes, in which he set out to discover what made that series so special for himself and New Zealand.

In his 1991 preface he wrote: "It's as if - in the same way that a photographic technician can lighten or darken an image during the printing process - somehow the winter of 1956 and the Springbok tour has been burned in sharp contrasting tones into the collective consciousness of many of New Zealand's male population over the age of forty."

For Roger, the tour was the end of his childhood and the beginning of adolescence.

"In 1956 sport was the thing, the only thing" he added.

"It was pure.

"Only later would we learn how similar the societies of White South Africa and New Zealand are. Back then were the last days of our innocence."

Fifty years on the Boks are still the prime rugby enemy, although the annual tests and expanded series have diluted the anticipation and mystery of these contests.

They have won only once in New Zealand since the professional Tri-Nations tournament started in 1996.

That 13-3 triumph came in 1998 when Pieter Rossouw skipped over after some nifty backline interplay in what was to be a horror losing stretch for the All Blacks.

The Springboks were up against it that day and triumphed, but their successors are in even greater strife as they look towards tomorrow's test at the Cake Tin.

They have lost successive tests, badly, and coach Jake White is fighting fires on multiple fronts.

It is not quite 1956 but a similar result in Wellington would turn the rugby world on its axis again.