The All Black who opposed apartheid: Ken Gray’s enduring impact – Phil Gifford

Ken Gray before a match against Oxford University during the All Blacks' 1963 tour of Britain, Ireland, France and North America in 1963. Photo / Getty Images

The Ken Gray story involves huge contrasts.

On the one hand, he was a great All Blacks prop, and, on the field from 1965 to 1969, became possibly the most feared All Black to ever wear the black jersey.

On the other, he was an open-minded liberal, whose principles saw him take, and hold, positions many in rugby were vehemently opposed to.

He refused to tour apartheid-era South Africa in 1970, and he lent valuable support to the Homosexual Law Reform Act of 1986.

Fran Wilde, who drove the ‘86 Reform Act, remembers him as “bright and eloquent. He was earmarked by the Labour Party and he would have gone a long way in politics”.

Wilde, now Dame Frances, says, “To have someone like him, a great rugby player, supporting homosexual law reform was fantastic. In those days if you supported gay rights, some people made the stupid assumption you must be gay. But here was Ken, a strapping, handsome, heterosexual farmer. It was brilliant to have his support.”

Sadly, Gray died in his sleep in November 1992. Only 54 years old, he had won selection as the Labour candidate for the Western Hutt seat in the 1993 general election.

The All Blacks arrive in London at the start of the 1967 tour of Britain and France: Sir Colin Meads (from left), Ken Gray, Kel Tremain and Sir Brian Lochore. Photo / Photosport

Gray will be honoured by his first rugby club, Paremata-Plimmerton, at the end of the month, with a ceremony in which framed jerseys belonging to him and 1991 Black Ferns pioneer Ericka Rere are hung on the clubhouse walls.

As a player Gray was revered by teammates like Sir Colin Meads, who called him “the greatest prop I ever put a shoulder on”, but feared by opponents.

At 1.88m tall, and 108kg, he wouldn’t look out of place lined up beside current All Blacks props. Fifty years ago he was an outlier, a towering giant, when props were short and squat. One of best of the era, 51-test Scottish and Lions prop Ian McLaughlin, who was the same height as Damian McKenzie, lived with the nickname Mighty Mouse.

Gray was different, and he was quite prepared to use his physique and steely game face to intimidate opposing props.

In 1975 he told journalist Bob Howitt: “If I encountered someone I would be marking on tour, I didn’t fraternise with him. I tried to look twice my size, and set a beady eye on him. It was all part of achieving a psychological advantage.”

Gray began his provincial rugby career for Wellington as a lock, playing against the 1959 Lions in the second row. As an international prop, Gray’s size and athleticism gave the All Blacks a triple lineout threat, with two locks in the middle of the lineout and Gray jumping at No 2. (At the time no lifting of a jumper was allowed, and hookers stood at the front of the lineout. Wingers threw the ball in.)

He propped on both sides of the scrum but preferred to play tighthead.

“Loosehead is the passive role,” said Gray. “It’s his job to look after the hooker, and keep the scrum tight. The tighthead prop should be more vigorous.”

Gray also liked propping better than locking, because being in the front row involved direct physical contact with the opposition for much of the game. “This to me was rugby.”

When he played, assistant referees were called touch judges, because their roles only involved signalling when the ball was out, or whether a goal kick had been successful. Television match officials hadn’t been dreamed of.

Ken Gray (left), John Major and Sir Wilson Whineray. Photo / Getty Images

It was an era when forwards sorted out a lot among themselves. The most extreme reaction Gray ever received was in a brutal match in Swansea against West Wales in 1967, when he punched his opposing prop. Gray told Bob Howitt, “He was bent on trouble-making. I warned him. But when I hit him, the crowd went mad. Years later, I could still hear the booing.”

Future All Blacks selector Earle Kirton was a teammate on the ‘67 tour. “Ken was a colossus on the field. Without him I think we may have lost the test with Wales. Our other prop, Jazz Muller, was struggling, so Ken told him to swap sides. In the next scrum we marched the Welsh back metres. There was silence, and then the Welsh crowd started clapping.”

Kirton says Gray was a voracious reader. “We were on the bus, about to head off on a long drive to Manchester. The big guys in the back seat, men like Pinetree Meads and Bunny Tremain, invited Ken to join them. Ken laughed and said, ‘Thanks. But I’ve just got the Times and the Economist [magazine]. I’ll stay here and read them.”

His time as an All Black ended when he announced his retirement at the end of 1969.

It soon emerged that the main reason was that he had decided he wouldn’t tour apartheid-era South Africa, as the All Blacks were due to do in 1970.

“Very simply,” he’d say later, “I wouldn’t play against a racially selected South African team.”

He was given every chance to change his mind. An All Blacks selector rang early in 1970, telling him a place in the team was being held for him if he wanted it. He didn’t.

Earle Kirton says that among Gray’s All Blacks teammates there was disappointment at his call, but no resentment: “We knew how much the team meant to him, and how seriously he would have considered the decision.”

But at the time it was a stance totally at odds with others in New Zealand rugby.

To this day, the often bitter backlash over Gray’s call is a topic his widow, Joy, finds difficult to discuss.

All Blacks Waka Nathan (left), Kel Tremain, Sir Colin Meads, Jack Hazlett and Ken Gray (far right) in action against the Lions in 1966. Photo / Photosport

Gray’s outspokenness compared to many of his rugby colleagues? You can probably trace it, says Joy, to his family.

“His father and mother were very strong characters, who both went ahead with what they wanted to do. Ken’s father was on the Hutt County Council. His mother ran the Wellington pony club.

“In the Gray household, there was a lot of political discussion. A lot of strong individuals, and everyone had their own opinions. An older brother embraced the Social Credit party. A man who worked on the farm for many years said he was a communist” Joy says with a laugh. “And believe it or not, because they were the only group that ran dances in Pāuatahanui, we were members of the Young Nationals in our teens.”

Gray’s range of interests as an adult was wide, from his extensive political involvement with the Labour Party to being on the board of Wellington’s Downstage Theatre, to helping gang members set up contracting businesses.

Joy says her late husband was also a man of vision. In 1969, when the Kapuni gas line was being laid on nearby farms, he packed Joy and the family into an aged Land Rover and sent off on a pipeline sight-seeing drive. At one point they stopped and looked down from a ridge on what is now Transmission Gully. “This is where the road out of Wellington should be,” he said, half a century before what’s now the motorway north from Wellington opened.

Earle Kirton is unequivocal in his belief that, while other All Blacks, such as Ben Couch, Minister of Police during the 1981 Springboks tour, and Grahame Thorne, elected MP for Onehunga in 1990, were parliamentarians, Ken Gray could have been the country’s first All Blacks Prime Minister.

• The hanging of Gray’s restored and reframed jerseys, and the historic jersey worn by 1991 pioneer Black Fern Ericka Rere, will take place at 7pm on Thursday, February 27 at the Paremata-Plimmerton Rugby Club.