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Does USA still have THIS far to go in its rugby hopes v New Zealand?
28 October 2014
According to one great cartoon from over 30 years ago....progress has been slow for USA rugby in their hopes of ever beating the All Blacks. Check this version out here.
When working for TVNZ in 1986 I wrote a book called 'New Zealand Sporting Disasters, Disappointments and Curiosities.' It did quite well and was reprinted six years later. The cartoons in it were the brilliant work of George Martin. I tried to write in a humorous way about some of the 'shockers' New Zealand sport had had over the years. Working upstairs then in the art department at the Avalon TV complex was George Martin, himself a man with a brilliant sports playing pedigree. I commissioned the ideas for the cartoons for the book and George brought them to life superbly.
This one here came when I wrote, as a 'Curiosity' about the All Blacks rugby team playing USA at Berkeley, California in 1913 and winning by 51-3 and then 77 years later the 1980 All Blacks went back to USA to San Diego and beat the Eagles by 53-6. I had kept a clipping from the 'Sports Illustrated' magazine who had sent one of their leading columnists out to see the game.
Dan Levin memorably wrote; 'The final score was All Blacks 53 USA Eagles 6, which was one point closer than the last time the two teams had met in 1913. On the scale of improvement shown by the USA in 1980 the United States can expect to draw a game against New Zealand in the year 5129!'
The quote became George Martin's vision of what the game of rugby might look like thousands of years into the future!
[Note; Since 1980 the All Blacks and USA have met one more time. In 1991 in Gloucester at the 2nd Rugby World Cup New Zealand won by 46-6. You would now perhaps have to do some more serious maths to work out what year it could be now re-calculated that USA would get a draw!]
Oh! Aren't we New Zealand rugby reporters arrogant!
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KEANE, MOSS
Lansdowne and Ireland
51 internationals for Ireland 1974–84
1 international for the British Isles 1977
A dedicated player who became only the third forward from Ireland to reach 50 international appearances. Keane was never a great lineout leaper or scrummager or runner in the open. Rather he played the game in the dark depths of rucks and mauls, where he was as good a grafter as the game has seen. For heart and pride, and the desire to do his utmost for Ireland, he could not be bettered.
Maurice Ignatius Keane first played for Ireland in 1974 in a 6–9 loss to France, but wins in two other matches that season gave Ireland the Five Nations title. In Keane’s fourth international season for Ireland, he made the British Isles team to tour New Zealand, after one of the team’s originals, Geoff Wheel, had to withdraw on medical advice.
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Keane had a delightful personality and a wicked sense of humour and many stories, true, exaggerated or otherwise, are still told about him.
In the 1978 New Zealand v Ireland match at Dublin, the Irish were being well beaten in the lineouts, where Keane was marking the All Black giant Andy Haden. The only chance Ireland had to win lineout ball was with their complicated lineout calls, which none of the New Zealanders could decipher. The All Blacks were helped on one occasion when the lineout call went out from the Irish halfback and they heard Keane cry, ‘Oh God no, not to me again’!
Moss Keane was the first Gaelic footballer to play rugby union for Ireland after eligibility rules were changed. He remained an enormously popular figure in Ireland after his retirement from playing.
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