In this extract from his new book, former New Zealand Herald sports writer Norman Harris reveals how he was assaulted by All Black Keith Murdoch shortly before the infamous altercation in a Welsh hotel that resulted in the front-row forward's exile, not just from rugby but his country.
"The All Blacks who toured Britain in 1972-73 were an unlovely bunch. They wore Mexican-style black hats and Viva Zapata moustaches and liked to call themselves the Mafia. They also seemed to think that to uphold this image they needed to be unfriendly and coarse. It was really quite childish, but it certainly discomfited their hosts and made them poor ambassadors.
Initially, however, I had interviewed Ian Kirkpatrick and written an article which portrayed him as a classic among All Black captains. The story described the captain as comparatively young, and not impressively articulate, but that there was a seriousness, even gravity, in his face that suggested age well beyond his 26 years. The story ended by describing the captain's attire, which was regulation touring kit: the same black blazer and grey slacks that touring New Zealand teams had worn down all the years.
Essentially it was in strong and sober contrast to other tourists - for instance, the last Australian cricket team, which had arrived as if for a fashion show, or the recent, victorious Lions whose off-duty attire had drawn a comparison to "refugees from the King's Road" Asked about the blazer and slacks, the captain earnestly replied: "I've never taken anything else on tour. It's all you've got to wear. It's all you want to wear." The story in the Sunday Times went down well. One of the paper's senior editors, Godfrey Smith, used it in a rugby union anthology, Take The Ball And Run. He titled the Kirkpatrick story "Black is In for All Black Skippers".
But I had perhaps been misled. Because, for all Kirkpatrick's talk about the responsibility of representing so many people back at home, neither he nor manager Ernie Todd seemed to have the strength to rein in the Mafia. Newspapers were soon reporting how hotels were glad to see their All Black visitors leave, one manager saying that "when they were hungry they used four-letter words to our staff". Autograph-seekers, it almost goes without saying, were told to f*** off.
I came across the tourists again in the Hydro Hotel, Peebles [south of Edinburgh], having just reported, for the Sunday Times, the Saturday match at Hawick against a Scottish Districts XV. It was a few days only before the win against Wales and an incident in Cardiff's Angel Hotel that was to have huge repercussions.
As I drank with New Zealand "journos" in a corner of the Hydro's bar I heard more stories of the antics of these tourists. One of them was to gain entry to another player's room by taking the door off its hinges. Not that this sort of thing was unique among touring rugby teams, but it had stuck in my mind. I was also aware that the big prop forward Keith Murdoch had been a controversial selection for the tour, on account of his apparently unstable temperament. He was reputed to have a very short fuse.
Going to Reception to collect my room key I found the self-same Murdoch already engaged in conversation with the porter. He was asking for the room key for "G. Whiting".
"Did you say Whiting, sir?" asked the porter rather uneasily. It appeared that he had heard the name correctly but felt something was amiss.
"Yes," said Murdoch. "G. Whiting. You've probably got two Whitings there."
The porter now looked at me, as if for reassurance - or help of some sort. I must have been standing a little closer to him than to Murdoch, because I evidently thought I could say something that could not be heard by the latter. Perhaps alcohol had interfered with spatial judgement.
"K. Murdoch," I said quietly.
My calculations were wrong. Murdoch spun around, reached out a large hand, grasped my scalp, and with a swift downward movement deposited me on the floor. There was immense strength in that forearm, and in a split second I hit the floor and bounced up again, papers from inside pockets shooting out. In practically the same second, Murdoch warned: "You f*****g watch it." On reflection it was a rather gratuitous remark. In fact it offered the very definition of the word gratuitous.
As Murdoch strode away the porter hastened to gather up my papers from the floor, to check that I was OK, that money hadn't been lost, and to ask if I wanted to report the assault. I declined.
It was certainly more serious than the unpleasant threat ["If you write anything like that about me again I'll slit your f*****g guts open"] of a hockey manager in Christchurch, but it still seemed vaguely to encompass the idea of living and dying by the sword - the sword of the player being physical action, that of the journalist being words. And I had been injudicious in saying what I did. But those were my eventual reflections. At the time it was very upsetting. I had never in my life - nor have I since - been manhandled, and it was a shock to the system. As I lay in my bed at the Hydro, not sleeping, I had black thoughts about the All Blacks. I would never fully regain the old pride.
The next day the departure lounge at Edinburgh was populated by the All Blacks and by associated media types. The larger-than-life Peter Bush, a photographer who looked like a front row forward and was quite close to the players, later told me how he was approached by Murdoch.
"Who's that reporter over there that I had a run-in with last night?" asked the player.
Said the photographer: "That's Norman Harris. He's with the Sunday Times. "And as a matter of fact he's a New Zealander."
Murdoch: "He didn't mind too much, did he?"
Replied Bush breezily: "Nah, he's fine. He's having a scalp transplant tomorrow." The response to Bush's wit was a grunt.
Whether or not the incident at the Hydro, along with a string of smaller incidents, played into the decision to send Murdoch home we will never know. But certainly the main trigger was an alleged assault on a security guard at Cardiff's Angel Hotel.
Murdoch, of course, never made it back to New Zealand. He got off the plane in Perth and disappeared into the outback. Eventually, a year or so later, word came to New Zealand that he was to be found on an oil drilling site.
Terry McLean, my old mentor at the Herald, subsequently took an opportunity to break a journey at Perth and find the reclusive Murdoch. 'TP' did indeed succeed - to a degree. He got few words from Murdoch, but turned them into a colourful piece. He described getting off a minibus and almost immediately coming face to face with his quarry. Murdoch, a spanner in his hand, told him to "get back on the bus". No more was said, but TP's account made much of Murdoch's menacing stare, which moved from the big spanner in his hands, to TP, to a nearby puddle of oily waste... "I got back on the bus," concluded TP."
Beyond Cook's Gardens: A Writer's Journey by Norman Harris.Published by Last Side Publishing Ltd, distributed by Nationwide Books, $29.95, in bookshops late February.
