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19 February 2015
I can remember clearly my first trip to the far north of New Zealand. It was in the hot, lazy summer of 1966. I had just turned 20 years old. I left Wellington with two Wellington College schoolmates, Dave Henderson and Evan Purdie, on a traveling holiday. I don't know why this story has come back to me now all these years later but once I got into clattering away on this keyboard the memories came flooding back. Read more »
19 February 2015
Here I am interviewing the great 1950s and 60s All Black Peter 'Tiger' Jones in Whangarei (in about 1985). I had met him earlier - before I was granted the right to wear the deplorable 'One World of Sport' blazer you see here! Read more »
15 May 2015
If you are in England and near the town of Rugby in Warwickshire it really behoves you to pay a visit, right? So this year I did and after a night in the nearby village of Dunchurch a visit to Rugby on its Market Day was a must - and fun. Read more »
20 February 2015
I found this quote the other day while trying to find out a few notes about the 2015 Kenyan Rugby Sevens team ahead of the next HSBC Sevens World Series event in Las Vegas. When the star Kenyan try-scorer Collins Injera was urgently called home after the earlier Wellington Sevens to be with his wife who was expecting a baby any day suddenly it was considerable news. I put the news comment in here just because I like the way the Kenyan team management speak about their man. Enjoy it... Read more »
28 February 2015
I love this old picture. There is so much about it that has come down the years. And on a personal level when I saw it as a kid I was first drawn to it by seeing our 'family name' on the advertising hoarding in the background. Read more »
28 February 2015
This is me at Ellis Park in Johannesburg in South Africa in 1976. Why did this young reporter want to have his picture taken right there? It wasn't just because my name was on the building behind. Click on 'Favourite Photos' here to read about that location's fascinating and sad role in South African rugby history. Read more »
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4 March 2015
NEW ZEALAND SEVENS TEAMS IN THE 2014-15 SERIES (In brackets; are the Keith Quinn performance ratings for each player out of 10 so far this season) Read more »
8 March 2015
Memories of dear Athletic Park. The ground in the suburb of Berhampore in Wellington, New Zealand was called 'The Home of Rugby' on a sign inside the ground. But its time as 'HQ' for rugby in Wellington had to end. By 1999 the facilities at the very famous field were old, rusty and literally in danger of collapsing in some places. After rugby had been played there for over 100 years a brand new stadium had been built downtown (in what we know now as Westpac Stadium). So we locals came to that very sad but inevitable day in 1999 - when the last test ever was played on 'our' home ground. Read more »
10 March 2015
Special guest writer Adam Julian of Wellington delivers here a very fair profile on the rugby life and post-rugby life of 78 year old Ian Neven MacEwan. Read more »
These days life is all about FAQ's; so to clear the air for those people who have often asked me just 'how many 15s All Blacks have first come through the Gordon Tietjens sevens coaching teams?' here is the full and definitive list. Note; While it is true Gordon has been coaching the New Zealand sevens team since 1994 his first involvement with a national sevens selection actually came a year earlier in 1993. Read more »
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And three new All Black caps; Connor, Wolfe and McKay conjure up a try in the very first minute in the first test at Auckland!
ALLIGADOO
A rugby term sometimes spelt ‘alickadoo’ and rarely heard outside Britain, which means a club official or highly-placed committee man.
One story says the spelling ‘alickadoo’ is derived from the words ‘all he can do [is talk]’.
The other story comes from J.B.G. Thomas’s Great Rugger Players, where it is said Ireland’s ‘Jammie’ Clinch was asked by his team-mate, Ernie Crawford, about the subject matter of a story Clinch was reading on a train, while returning from an international in 1925. When Clinch replied, ‘I’m reading about a Spaniard called Alicardo, who thinks a lot of himself and is always blowing his load,’ (bragging) Crawford was highly amused and likened Alicardo to the rugby officials riding on the train with the team.
After that Crawford used the word frequently around Dublin. It became distorted by Irish accents to ‘alligadoo’ but it stuck as a term for an officious committee man.
On the Teen Rugby Show on TV in New Zealand (on 18 July 2006) which All Black used the words; 'bugger, shit, shits and shithouse' in a five minute item.
What do you think?
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