All Blacks fullback Damian McKenzie crosses the line during his side's 73-0 win over Uruguay at OL Stadium, Lyon. Photo / Andrew Cornaga, photosport.nz
The All Blacks didn’t have too many problems dispatching Uruguay 73-0 in their Rugby World Cup pool play clash. But, as Neil Reid reports, previous non-test encounters between the two countries have been wild on and off the field
All Blacks prop John Spiers stirred up one hell of a hornet’s nest when he stepped in to help a team-mate set upon by a Uruguayan opponent.
Within seconds, an angry fan watching the All Blacks’ first-ever match in South America – an October 12, 1976, game against Uruguay in Montevideo which was not classified as a test – joined the stoush.
Then followed one of the two local touch judges chosen to officiate in the clash.
But it was the “murderous intent” of the fan – who was armed with a knife – which sent a chill down the spines of some of Spiers’ team-mates, including Stu Wilson, who was watching on from the sidelines.
In Ebony & Ivory, the autobiography he co-wrote with great mate and fellow Wellington and All Black wing Bernie Fraser, Wilson described the on-field invader zeroing in on Spiers as the “crazy man with the bulging eyes and the sharp knife”.
“I can see that face now, and the steel glinting as he headed straight for John Spiers. Ugh. What a mess he might have made of that benign old face had he got there,” Wilson wrote.
“Suddenly he was squashed flat beneath a small army of official protectors and borne away, kicking and screaming, never to be seen again. The guy with the bulging eyes and the knife, that is. Not John Spiers.
“Old Spiro never admitted to doing anything he would be ashamed of, let alone that would inspire murderous intent under the Montevideo sun.”
Way closer to the action was Graham Mourie, with the Uruguay game doubling as both his captaincy and playing debut for the All Blacks.
Writing in his autobiography, Graham Mourie, Captain, he recalled that while his team scored in an “orderly fashion” during the eventual 64-3 win, “the highlight of the game turned out to be not rugby, but the locals’ method of crowd – or player control”.
“There was an isolated attack by one of the Uruguayan players on John Callesen, and John Spiers went to lend a hand,” Mourie wrote.
“A spectator also decided to have his say.
“Within seconds, the touch judge had joined in along with a few more players and the military raced onto the field, complete with dogs, and separated the combatants before frog-marching the interfering spectator away.”
During the scrap, Uruguay then managed to sneak on an extra player so played with 16 men briefly until it was noticed by match officials.
“It was a novel introduction to Latin American rugby,” Mourie said.
The lengthy travel route chosen by the New Zealand Rugby Football Union to take the 1976 All Blacks to Uruguay for the start of their first South American tour was not one that filled nervous flyers with joy.
That included their captain.
Instead of booking them on an available direct flight from Auckland to the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, rugby bosses decided they first had to fly to Tahiti for a stopover, before then flying to Chile via Easter Island.
Mourie recalled how the leg from Papeete to Chile – which included a stopover on Easter Island – was not for the faint-hearted.
“I was not the keenest of flyers, and the Chilean airline’s DC8 did not inspire confidence,” he wrote.
“It’s one of the airlines from which I still keep the baggage checks, just to show I have faced extreme peril and survived.”
In Graham Mourie, Captain, the veteran of 61 matches for the All Blacks described the terminal at Easter Island’s Mataveri International Airport as “about as big as the Inglewood changing room”.
“Our stay there was highlighted by going to look at the famous statues,” he wrote.
The late Andy Haden – who played 117 matches for the All Blacks between 1972-85 – was also less than flattering about Easter Island’s airport in his 1983 autobiography Boots ‘n All!, describing it as a “chicken coup that served as a terminal for two flights a week”.
“It featured a dirt floor, wire netting windows and a fire truck with a flashing light that operated when turned by hand and a motor that would not work no matter how it was turned,” wrote Haden.
One more plane trip awaited the team after they had landed in Chile.
A flight from Chile to Uruguay took them across the Andes mountain range.
Four years earlier, a plane carrying Uruguay’s Old Christians rugby team crashed in the Andes while flying to Chile. Sixteen people were rescued two months later.
In the aftermath of the rescue operation, it was revealed that survivors had eaten some of the flesh of those who died in the crash.
“Crossing the Andes, the great divide of the South American continent, provided the excuse for the wits of the team to exercise their macabre senses of humour,” Mourie wrote.
“Among the best-selling books at the time was Piers Paul Read’s Alive, the horrific tale of a Uruguayan club rugby team which in 1972 survived in the Andes after an aircraft crash by eating the flesh of some of their dead teammates.
“We later in Uruguay met some members of that club and learned first-hand of the tragic flight. Two survivors, Antonio Bizintin and Roberto Canessa, were among our opponents in Montevideo.”
The All Blacks kicked off their nine-match tour of South America with the clash against Uruguay.
Following the match – which Mourie recalled was played in an “unlikely place of so many new All Blacks” - the side went on to win a further eight games in Argentina.
What the All Blacks encountered both on and off the field was a huge culture shock for many of the young team.
“Like Argentina, Uruguay had a right-wing military government,” he wrote in Graham Mourie, Captain.
“We visited the British Ambassador, whose predecessor had been kidnapped and spent six months in solitary confinement, we noted the presence of the military in the streets and patrolling armoured cars, and we played against Uruguay at the Estadio Militaire, yet all of this did not prepare us for the way the match developed.
“We were to quickly learn more, and rapidly, about the difference of life in a state where the soldiers rule.”
That sank home when the All Blacks were waiting at Montevideo’s Carrasco International Airport waiting for their flight to Buenos Aires for the Argentina leg of the tour.
While there, two players decided that the Uruguayan pesos they had were no longer of any use to them and found a novel way to get rid of them.
“Two of the tour clowns, Andy Haden and Paul Sapsford, were up on a mezzanine floor, floating their worthless notes down to a khaki-clad cleaner who was sweeping the pennies from heaven,” Mourie wrote.
“The ubiquitous soldier saw this action as insulting to his country and promptly arrested Haden and Sapsford at gunpoint.”
Mourie said it was only “some quick talking” from the side’s manager Ron Don and several players that saw the duo being released.
“And it was a much quieter and sober party, particularly Haden and Sapsford, that landed in Buenos Aires.”
While the All Blacks have only been to Uruguay once, several other New Zealand club and provincial sides have visited the football-mad South American country.
That includes the star-studded Counties provincial rugby team in the mid-1980s who played a local selection in Montevideo.
The side’s physio Malcolm Hood – who was also the All Blacks physio – previously revealed to the Herald how he had unwittingly put the life of the side’s New Zealand Sevens and New Zealand Māori star Lindsay Raki at risk.
The offer was made as Hood and team captain Alan Dawson were taken on a late-night drive through Uruguay’s capital city of Montevideo by local two players who were in the team to face Counties the following day.
“I was in the back seat and partway around the player next to me leant over to me and whispered, ‘Malcolm, who do you want killed?’,” Hood recalled.
“I said, ‘What?’ I thought there might be a translation issue, but his English was quite good. He repeated himself and I said, ‘Well who can I have killed?’. He said, ‘Anyone in Uruguay, anyone’.”
Hood responded with what he thought was a joke, nominating Raki.
“I said, ‘Oh well, our first-five hasn’t been training as well as I would want, kill him’,” he said.
But it was no joke for the Uruguay player, who told Hood the hit would cost US$110 ($163); including US$73 for the actual act and a charge of US$60 to source the murder weapon.
“That was when I realised he was serious and I told him ‘No, no, I don’t want Lindsay Raki killed, I will just get him to do some more sit-ups’,” Hood said.
“But he said, ‘No it is all right, I will have him killed’.”
The Counties and Uruguay side had met on the eve of their match in Montevideo.
Defying normal rugby conventions, the local selection was so excited to be hosting its first New Zealand provincial team that they held the “after-match” function the night before they clashed on the field.
Fear over what might happen to Raki saw Hood stick close to him for the duration of the team’s stay in Uruguay.
“And I was glad when we all got out safely,” he laughed.
Hood later met another survivor from the Old Christians rugby team who had crash-landed in the Andes.
He said a suited and “beautifully spoken” senior rugby official told him that he “was a cannibal”.
“He and I got on really well, he was a really nice fellow,” Hood said. “He had a depth of character about him that I really liked.
“We talked for ages, and he brought up the fact that he was a cannibal. And then the story evolved that he was a cannibal out of necessity.
“If they hadn’t eaten their companions they wouldn’t have survived,” Hood said.
“I knew the story, but it was quite something to meet someone who had been there. I just marvelled at the survival story. He was such a humble, decent person.”
The All Blacks have played in Fiji and Samoa. But did you know they also played a match in Tahiti – and were given silverware to prove it?
You won’t find it in any official history of the All Blacks, or online list of matches the side has played, but the side played a one-off festival match in Papeete against a local selection during a stopover on the way back from South America in late 1976.
The match was arranged by Haden after he had received an invitation for the team to play in Tahiti by legendary French fullback, and his friend, Pierre Villepreux.
At the time, Villepreux was coaching in Tahiti and proved to be a “charming host” for the All Blacks during the stopover on the way to South America, Haden wrote in Boots ‘n All!
He told Haden he was “eager to have the All Blacks play a game on their return from Argentina”.
It was a request which coach Jack Gleeson and manager Ron Don had “no objections” about, so Haden “assured Pierre that over the next month, I would be able to conjure up sufficient enthusiasm among the players to field a team that would wave the flag on the way back through, even though I had my doubts about the degree of dedication that would exist at that stage, with most players regarding themselves as ‘on holiday’.
“Pierre wanted the game desperately and promised a party in our honour if we would oblige – probably the right sort of incentive to persuade what I knew would be a pretty social gathering at that stage.”
Writing in Graham Mourie, Captain, the squad’s leader remembered that the return stopover in Tahiti was “one of those memories which I hope will never fade”.
While there, Air New Zealand was hit by a strike, meaning the stop in Tahiti was extended.
“There was a unanimous chorus of ‘Oh, what a shame’ as shorts-clad All Blacks disappeared in all directions in pursuit of their own particular idyll,” he wrote.
“The memories drift into a potpourri of sunbathing, cricket matches on deserted beaches with only sea as the boundary, diving on coral reefs, seafood meals and French wine.”
But they also had to get the match against the local section out of the way, something which Mourie wrote they approached “with some reluctance”.
Haden remembered the after-match function was held in the hours before the match started “to compensate for the social time that would be lost because the game had an evening kick-off”.
“The All Black touring team won the trophy donated for the occasion by achieving its 10-try handicap by halftime but found the going tougher in the second half when the backs and the forwards swapped roles,” he wrote in Boots ‘n All!”
Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 30 years of newsroom experience, including covering the 2003, 2007 and 2011 Rugby World Cup tournaments.
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