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Brian Lochore battles on in South Africa in 1970.
A recent find; this great pic of 1966-70 All Black captain Sir Brian Lochore (With a story behind it)
25 January 2015
The 1970 tour of South Africa by the All Blacks should have been a great experience for the All Black captain Brian Lochore. For tough reasons it did not turn out that way.
Brian was given a great looking 30-man All Black squad when he left New Zealand for the three month tour of the Republic. But he broke his hand in a tour warm-up game in West Australia on the way over and missed the first five matches in South Africa. Then his star lieutenant Colin Meads broke his arm and struggled thereafter. These disruptions could not have helped.
New Zealanders also say 'home' South African refereeing in the test matches did not help either. The All Blacks tumbled to a 1-3 test series loss. Lochore played all four tests but Meads could only battle through the last two.
I like this picture of Lochore as it shows him in a kind of portrait pose against the glare of a white hot South African rugby afternoon. I have a recall of rugby in those days in South Africa being played on dull brown, rock hard fields. I saw it for myself when as a young reporter, I watched the 1976 All Blacks.
You can see Lochore was playing here while still in the wars, his hand is still being protected from his injury here and there is claret around the mouth and nose. Those were tough times on the rugby field. Rugby union and rugby league players in those days used to say; 'You took it and you gave it - and you never grumbled.'
Remember Colin Meads did not so much 'break his arm' on that tour; more like 'his arm was broken for him' (my quote) from the stomp of a South African forward in a provincial game.
Mind you, the New Zealand people loved both Meads and Lochore so much that they were both later Knighted for their 'Services to Rugby.'
(And quite right too!)
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Every day there is Rugby History 1 September 1946
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I cannot believe it was so long ago! But right from a VERY young age at Benneydale and Berhampore in New Zealand I knew I wanted to write and talk about rugby - and I've been doing it all my life. (And many more to come I hope!)
A-Z of Rugby
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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.
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What is the difference in years between Joe Stanley playing his last test for New Zealand, and Jeremy Stanley being picked to become an All Black and emulate his father’s success?
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