News Comment

And there's a many a Kiwi who has rung him on this day in the years since - after he grew to be one of our greatest All Blacks.

ANDURAN, JOE
Universitaire de France and France
1 international for France 1910

This player is another of rugby’s unusual internationals from early in the twentieth century.

Joe Anduran, an art dealer, was in his shop in Paris one day when a taxi pulled up outside and several officials of the French Rugby Federation climbed out. Apparently they had just seen the French team depart from the railway station as they headed off to play Wales in Swansea on New Year’s Day, 1910. But only 14 Frenchmen had gone on the train; the 15th was held up in Bordeaux while doing his military service.

So the officials were sent on an urgent errand around Paris to find another forward for the game to be played next day. Their search eventually took them to Joe Anduran’s art shop. Anduran was a useful club player in Paris but nothing more, and at first he thought it was a joke when the strangers asked him if he wanted to play for France the next day. He was persuaded to leave immediately, but he soon found his first obstacle in making the trip to Swansea was not so much the booking on the cross-channel ferry, but his wife!

Madame Anduran, it seems, did not share her husband’s pride in being selected to play for France – she had made arrangements for Joe to do some family visiting with her the next day. However, soon Joe Anduran was on the train for Swansea, where the next day he ran on to St Helen’s field for his debut for France.

Wales won the game by the handsome margin of 49 points to 14. Not surprisingly, Joe Anduran was one of those who was axed by the French selectors in their reshuffle of the badly beaten team and he was never seen again in the French colours.A good story for the history books though!

The TV satellite had broken down and the Japan team management asked the referee to delay kickoff until the 'live pictures were through' to Japanese viewers.