Talk:1981 Springbok Tour

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To-do list for 1981 Springbok Tour: edit  · history  · watch  · refresh
  • Write lead as per WP:LEAD
  • Add section on Tour matches (Tests & provincial)
  • Add references, especially inline citations
  • Add photographs and images where appropriate


Resources

Not entirely appropriate for this to redirect to the All Blacks (and thence to the more formal name "New Zealand national rugby union team"). Most of the games on that tour were against provincial sides. Robin Patterson 00:36, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Moved information from All Blacks to here. There is a lot that can be added! porge 08:26, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

Does anyone have the match results anywhere? Lisiate 20:38, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Good point - we should probably make a quick note of who actually won what. test results under, don't have provincial matches to hand... 1981 SA vs New Zealand

0815 Christchurch SA 9 T 1 C 1 P0 D1 NZ 14 T 3 C 1 P0 D0

0829 Wellington SA 24 T 1 C 1 P5 D1 NZ 12 T 0 C 0 P4 D0

0912 Auckland SA 22 T 3 C 2 P2 D0 NZ 25 T 2 C 1 P4 D1


Contents

[edit] Hamilton

I've changed the account of the Hamilton match a bit. My details come from having been one of the protestors in the middle of the field, and from 1981: The Tour, by Geoff Chapple.

Chapple gives 350 people as the number who broke into the ground. I certainly agree it was substantially more than 50. About 50 people were arrested from that protest group by the police without the numbers remaining significantly diminishing. (The police also arrested other protestors who were not in the middle of the ground).

While there was certainly suggestions in the media throughout the tour that broken glass would be spread on grounds, I'm not sure that it ever happened. In Hamilton, people did not come armed with broken glass. Very few people knew that there would be an assault planned directly on the ground, and for the most part the anti-Tour movement had stayed away from rugby grounds up to that point. There certainly were beer bottles thrown from the crowd into the group of protestors, and some almost certainly smashed. There would have been deaths had we not been wearing crash and bicylce helmets. Paul Chalmers, one of those arrested before reaching the middle of the field, has a set of field glasses thrown at him while he was being led away by the police. The glasses smashed a hole in his helmet.[Chapple, p 90].

The police were really worried that the crowd was going to riot and tear the protestors to pieces. According to Terry Dibble (a priest), the police commissioner said "I've told my men to look after themselves first" [Chapple, p 101). The police didn't have the numbers to arrest everyone on the field - it took an hour to arrest the first 50. A baton charge might have cleared the field but that would have generated huge international publicity and probably caused deaths.

I can't be sure whether the approaching plane was the final straw causing the police to cancel the match, but that was the prevailing theory at the time. In retrospect, I don't think the police had any choice but to cancel it, but the plane gave them an excuse.

Above written by Gadfium. From memory a cop bio said reason for the cancellation was they thought broken glass had been spread, I will check this - but of course the policemen could be wrong too. Winstonwolfe

I have vivid memories of watching Hamilton on television, and the number of protestors on the ground was certainly around 2-300. Commentary did speculate that glass on the ground as the reason for cancelling. On the same afternoon there was a small bomb explosion at Christchurch airport (in a toilet, IIRC) with no injuries. dramatic 10:43, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article title

As the article is about the protests, not the gameplay, I suggest it be renamed to 1981 Springbok tour protests. If an article is created about the play (probably best a separate article), it could be called 1981 Springbok tour to New Zealand, similar to the naming of the Lions tour articles, eg, 2005 British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand (although I would prefer tour of rather than tour to). Nurg 05:29, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a big problem with the renaming as suggested, but I also think the political and sporting aspects can be covered in the single article, as was done for New Zealand cricket team in Zimbabwe in 2005-06. Just add a section for "The Rugby".-gadfium 07:55, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Great article

One of the best rugby union articles I have read on here. Good work to those involved. Cvene64 08:33, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! It badly needs some pictures, though.-gadfium 09:09, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Spoke to a press photographer of the time about pics, but he was worried the paper held copyright.Winstonwolfe 04:39, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

The best thing to do would be to upload a photo claiming it as an historic image, and write a fair-use rationale on its page. Cvene64 17:08, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

-thanks, discussed that with him and it's no go - he's not going to take the risk - pity he had some good pics :-(.Winstonwolfe 07:23, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1976 Olympics Boycott

The boycott of the 1976 Summer Olympics by 22 African nations as a result of Muldoons violation of the Gleneagles Agreement needs it's own article. It was quite a significant part of sporting history. At the moment I don't have enough time to research the issue though. Any takers? Mostlyharmless 01:39, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

You should request such an article also at Talk:1976 Summer Olympics, where there are already a couple of items discussing the boycott.-gadfium 04:24, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External link submission

I've added an external link from this article to a site which I manage in my capacity as web editor for the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage (the site is www.nzhistory.net.nz).

The link is to a web feature on the 81 Tour recently published to mark the 25th anniversary. The content is written by a professional historian and includes images and film for which we have copyright clearance, but only for our use (sorry!). I will try and do a check this week to make sure factual information in the Wikipeda article is in accord with our feature and let you know if any changes might be required.

I hope this is considered appropriate for Wikipedia's purposes, please let me know if there is a problem.

Jamie Mackay 10:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Update - have now corrected the links used in the citations. Jamie Mackay 21:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Decision to proceed

The decision to proceeed with the tour was not Muldoon's alone but a collective cabinet decision. Support came from other ministers, including Ben Couch, a forner All Black of Maori descent denied a South Africa tour who was both Minister of Maori Affairs and Minister of Police at the time. As a Minister who fully supported the actions of his Police staff, and one whose own opposition to apertheid did not overrule his 'sport out of politics' stance, perhaps he deserves a mention.


And what does Robert Muldoon allowed the All Blacks to tour South Africa.mean? When were NZ citizens "allowed" to leave the county by the PM? He took no action at all - which is ezactly what any other PM would have done.

I would debate this also: Although the Muldoon government was re-elected in the 1981 election its majority was reduced from four seats to just one and as in 1978 Muldoon's National Party received fewer votes than the opposition Labour Party. Whether this decline in popularity was a consequence of Muldoon's support of the tour or part of a larger trend away from his governments paternalistic conservatism, is still a matter for debate.

The National Government won 47.9% (against Labour's 39.6%) of the vote in 1975, 39.8% in 1978 (Labour's 40.4%) and 38.7% in 1981 (Labour 39.1%). Between 1978 and 1981, Labour lost more support than National - an opposition party losing ground over a six year-old government. Muldoon's lost votes were not a result of the tour. Herne nz 06:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

My memory of exactly what happend in 1976 is now rather hazy, but I believe that Muldoon refused even to ask the All Blacks not to go to South Africa. The Gleneagles Agreement called for Governments to discourage sporting contacts with South Africa, but Muldoon didn't discourage them.
I would have thought the National Party gained support because of the Springbok Tour - that is, it got more votes than it would have had the tour not happened, even if the tour had been cancelled for reasons which didn't reflect on the Government. The majority of those who opposed the Tour were unlikely to have voted National regardless of the Tour. Of course, this is speculation, but I agree this section of the article could be revised.-gadfium 06:36, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tour scheduling

If anyone is doing offline research (opportunities are more limited here in the provinces) could they please keep an eye out for references to debate/controversy over the tour schedule. I seem to recall that there was some, and from this distance it seems bizarre that a Saturday game was scheduled against a 3rd-division side (Nelson-Bays) while NZ Maori - regarded by most touring teams as the equivalent of an extra test match - were relegated to playing the midweek (B grade) team. This suggests influence by the SARFU not wanting their top team to be seen playing the Maori. dramatic 03:30, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article Size

As this article is starting to get big, I suggest we start spiting it out into other articles Brian | (Talk) 07:38, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps this article could be limited to the actual tour, and the background stuff could be moved to a more general article on NZ's sporting contacts with apartheid south africa? Then we could spend more time on things like the Gleneagles Agreement, the Olympic boycott that we caused, etc. New Zealand sporting contacts with apartheid South Africa is probably too long a title, but I can't think of anything shorter off the top of my head. --Helenalex 09:16, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

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