Let's Make Sure Guy Fawkes is Banned from all future Rugby Tests!

26 August 2014

At last some outright commonsense is coming into the pre-match presentation at rugby tests in New Zealand. While it is all very well to be wise after the event there was never any place for bloody great bombs going off at the end of the challenge laid down before the recent tests after the All Black's haka.

I noted at an England test a few weeks back that the explosions actually were being timed and choreographed by some pyrotechnics experts to explode as the All Blacks did the 'hee-ha!' bit at the end of their traditional challenge.

Why I ask?

And sitting in one's seats you could, for a few seconds, feel a ferocious heatwave rush across the field and into the faces of the fans. Apart from a show of some kind of Kiwi macho strutting - what was the purpose of this?

Entertainment?

None that I could see. Just bloody dangerous.

To my of thinking the explosions were always going to an accident waiting to happen.

I hope the nice lady who bought an All Black jersey after her husband had surprised her with the tickets to the game but who then had her head sliced open in the explosion is not averse to putting her possibly burnt hands out to ask for some serious compensation from the NZRU.

And that compensation should not be just free tickets to the next test!

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Every day there is Rugby History 2 July 2005

Click to show The test they called 'Carter's Game' - as NZ won the series against the British and Irish Lions.

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Wellington's fans saw Daniel Carter at his very best; 2 tries and nine successful goals (33points) as the ABs stun the Lions 48-18

A-Z of Rugby

Click to show BATTY, GRANT

BATTY, GRANT
Wellington, New Zealand
15 internationals for N. Zealand 1972–77

The Scottish TV commentator Bill McLaren best described this busy and talented All Black. He said that Batty went at his game like a ‘little buzz-saw’, and indeed he did.
Grant Batty was a rarity in All Black rugby of the early 1970s. He was a back (a wing mostly) who had genuine speed, aggression and inventiveness. Although small in stature, he was never one to step back from a physical confrontation, no matter how imposing his opponent might have been. Not everyone in New Zealand could cope with a player of his brilliance and physical approach, and although New Zealanders were more than grateful on several occasions for his feisty presence on the field, he was always regarded as controversial.
Batty was received in a similar light wherever he played in the rugby world. Cardiff crowds booed him when he played there with the All Blacks in 1972–73. He replied by playing brilliantly. South African crowds treated him the same way. Batty responded by showing immense courage and playing on even after sustaining a near-crippling knee injury. Such was his value to the All Blacks that they insisted on playing him in the tests even though he had to run about with a metal cast hidden under his knee bandages.
Sadly, Batty’s knee problems became so bad he was forced out of rugby at the age of 25.
Controversial he might have been, but the crowds in New Zealand and elsewhere always flocked in to watch Batty.
He later shifted to Australia and by the 1990s had begun a long-term association on the coaching staff of the Queensland Reds team and other club sides.