KeithQuinnRugby
Thinking and talking about rugby every day for 50+ years
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MY TAKE ON SOME OF THE RUGBY NEWS STORIES WHICH COME INTO MY WORLD.
15 August 2014
Yes, I know you'll all be screaming, 'here's old Quinn in the first week of his rugby website now asking us to believe he has a hare-brained story which involves him and the late Lauren Bacall! Read more »
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11 August 2014
Yes it really is going to happen! For those of us over the years who have wondered at an apparent oversight - or even a grave injustice (you can take your pick) it seems that an amalgamation between two World Rugby Halls of Fame is going to be very good news for the great New Zealand All Black Sir Colin Meads. Read more »
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10 August 2014
Sunday night on the couch at around half past eight at my place has always been a bit of a ritual. Its always been the time to settle back and enjoy 'quality theatre' on New Zealand's TV1. This last weekend having a film about a familiar and warm rugby memory for New Zealanders in that timeslot might have been a risk. But 'The Kick' was a delight. I never moved for its near two-hour duration. Read more »
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10 August 2014
Gee I hope not! New Zealand rugby's trophy cabinet used to bulge with silver and gold cups, with other assorted medals and golden glories scattered about randomly, to the point where no one at the NZ Rugby Union offices had the time or inclination to collate or sort out the stuff - there was so much of it! Read more »
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9 August 2014
*GOOD NEWS AT LAST FOR OUR 'PINETREE!'* Read more »
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9 August 2014
This is great and appropriate really; our great All Black, Sir Colin Meads, for years had been a member of the privately owned International Rugby Hall of Fame - but after the IRB opened up its own website in 2006 Colin was strangely, always ignored. This irked a number of reporters in New Zealand (I can hold my hand up here) who asked 'what was going on?' Read more »
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Television New Zealand announced that all four tests of the 1976 All Blacks tour of South Africa would be telecast live. This was the first time all tests of an All Blacks event in South Africa were to be shown on TV.
INTER-ISLAND MATCH
This was a game which was begun in New Zealand in 1897 and which became an annual one (with the exception of 1930 and the war years) until 1986, between teams representing the two main islands of New Zealand.
The inter-island series, North Island against South Island, was, through the 1920s right up to the early 1970s, consistently up to international standard. In its heyday, the game was eagerly looked forward to by everyone in New Zealand as it featured a match that often had the look of New Zealand ‘A’ against New Zealand ‘B’ (the ‘A’ team being the side which won!). Sometimes the game did officially double as an All Black trial.
In the 1970s lack of promotion of the game led to loss of interest. The New Zealand Rugby Union, after years of playing the inter-island game at major grounds, started moving it to lesser towns. Public support fell away and towards the end the game was marked by the number of top players who declared their unavailability rather than by those who did turn out. It was sad for New Zealand traditionalists when the match was abolished in 1987 and replaced by a three-way regional trial series featuring teams from three new zones, Northern, Central and Southern.
The last annual game in 1986 was typical of the decline of the North v South game. Played in the smasll town of Oamaru in the South Island, the game had a local college match as its curtain-raiser. When the college game finished, most of the crowds of local schoolchildren drifted away home, leaving the inter-island match to go ahead in front of a much smaller audience. The North Island won the game 22–10, ending the annual series with 49 wins. South had won 26 times and there were three drawn games.
The North-South game did return for special one-off games in 1995 and 2012. The former was an All Black trial and the latter was a fundraising game for the financially troubled Otago Rugby Union.
Ironically the inter-zone series which had followed the cancelled North-South series in 1986 had only three seasons of play before it, too, folded through lack of interest.
Who was the first All Black captain to be red or yellow carded in a test match?
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