KeithQuinnRugby
Thinking and talking about rugby every day for 50+ years
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Your website editor has been chosen to commentate on rugby's return to the SummerB Olympic Programme, in Rio de Janeiro in August 2016. His commentaries on the sevens will be part of the host broadcaster coverage for OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Service) the official broadcast TV outlet of the IOC. This will be my tenth Summer Olympic Games. I am publishing here my personal stories and memories of the previous nine Games I have been to. Read here...
The fourth in a series of the personal memories of TVNZ’s Keith Quinn and his trips to the Summer Olympic Games; Read more »
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As a 25 year old cub reporter for the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation I was selected to go to the Summer Olympic Games in Munich Germany in August-September 1972. I had never been out of New Zealand before and so everywhere I went I had eyes as big as soup plates. On the journey over main memories are of getting off the plane at Fiumicino Airport in Rome and standing boggle-eyed counting the Jumbo jets on the tarmac. I kid you not, there were 29 there. Read more »
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*MONTREAL 1976; *This is the Second of eight Summer Olympic Games Keith has attended. Read more »
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The fifth in a series of the personal memories of Keith Quinn and his trips to the Summer Olympic Games; Read more »
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This is the third of nine Summer Olympic Games Keith has attended. Below this LA Story read his memories of *Montreal 1976* and *Munich 1972*. Read more »
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The gold medal goes to New Zealand in Kuala Lumpur! Captain Eric Rush and coach Gordon Tietjens' team beats Fiji in a great final in the final 21-12.
VAN VOLLENHOVEN, TOM
Northern Transvaal and South Africa
7 internationals for Sth Africa 1955–56
Acclaimed as a man who might have become South Africa’s finest wing, van Vollenhoven indeed fashioned a reputation as a great try-scoring wing – but it was for St Helen’s at rugby league.
His international rugby career was cruelly brief. After his debut as a centre against the 1955 Lions, van Vollenhoven moved to the wing and promptly became the first player to score three tries in a test in South Africa. In the second test in Australia the next year, he kicked a dropped goal – it was only the second time he had ever attempted one – but his form fell away in New Zealand and while he played eight of the first nine matches, he played only the third test.
The crew-cutted van Vollenhoven was reckoned to be inconsistent, but there was nothing unreliable about him in the matter of scoring tries. In his 19 matches on that long tour, van Vollenhoven scored 16 tries, but was such a natural and instinctive player that selectors found him difficult to fit into a team pattern.
He certainly proved them wrong, or misguided, with St Helen’s.
Who were the players who first took successfully kicked test match penalties past the 6,7,8, and 9 World Record Marks?
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