Maori Rugby emerging as a force

Tu Tangata, Issue 9, 1 December 1982, Page 10

Maori Rugby emerging as a force

By TERRY McLEAN

I must be frank. I can find no trace of how or where the first Maori took to Rugby in New Zealand. Although a form of football was played in Christchurch during the 1860 s, leading to the wrongful conclusion by the Christchurch Rugby Club that they were the originators of the game in this country, Rugby was not in fact established until 1870. C.J. Monro, a Londoner, set it going in Nelson. The game spread from there to Wellington in the following year and, year by year, perhaps even month by month, extended thence throughout the country.

But the 1870 s were scarcely appropriate* to the fusion of Maoris and pakehas in an English game. Formal warfare between Maoris and settlers, principally over land rights, did not end until 1863. In Taranaki and the Urewera, followers of the Hauhau movement resisted the White man for much of the next decade. Thus, the climate for interracial mingling in a robust sport was scarcely suitable, during the 1870 s. Nor were early settlers always generous in their appreciation of the native peoples of New Zealand. There were many references to “niggers”. “To most of the

European settlers, who looked on primitive peoples with the sympathetic eye, neither of the romantic nor of the anthropologist”, says Keith Sinclair in “The Origins of the Maori Wars”, “the Maoris were simply savages”. Maoris were said to be “gossiping, slovenly, lazy, like all men in a savage stage”. A missionary said the greatest cause of decline in the Maori population was “uncleanness, inwardly and outwardly, in diet, dress, and habitation, in body and mind, in all their thoughts, words and actions”.

A whole heap of prejudice to break down was there, quite evidently. All the more wonder, therefore, that by 1884 some Maoris were members of a New Zealand team which visited Australia. Only 18 years after the foundation of Rugby in the country, 26 men, four of them pakeha, six of them full-blooded Maoris and the remainer half-caste, began the famous expedition around the world which, more than any other event, laid the foundations of New Zealand Rugby as a national and international force.

That, surely, was one of the romantic developments of all sport the mingling, within so short a space, of natives and newcomers in an expedition which, while not truly representative, identified New Zealand Rugby to the world long before any other nation’s game had become known outside its own shores. How different might have been the history of South Africa, one cannot help thinking, if the peoples native to that country had been permittted and encouraged, as were the Maoris, to join the sport brought in by the foreign settlers.

A romance of sport, I say again. Let us consider the implications in a letter from a member of the 1888 team to his grandfather. Ihimaira, “The Smiler”, dating this on October 16 from the Glendower Hotel in England and writing to Te Muera Rangitaumaha in what was described as excellent Maori, said: “To Te Muera, also to Raniera,-

“Great is my affection towards you all. My inmost heart is full of love, and I cannot help keeping you constantly in remembrance.

“O, sirs! Salutations to you all. May God be gracious and keep you all in health who are living at that place. Here end the greetings to each of the pe0p1e....”

Ihimaira described the voyage up to and through the Suez Canal “dug by human hands”. He had seen where Moses crossed over with the children of Israel. Because of sea-sickness, he was unable to eat for a week. Such was the heat that he and his mates were unable to sleep below and lay on the decks through the night. In Italy, they beheld many of the places visited by the Apostles. “Eventually”, he says, “we arrived

safely in England. On the Wednesday, four days afterwards, we met a repre-

sentative team picked fom ten clubs and beat them, four points to one, in the presence of a vast multitude of people. About 60 matches have been arranged for us.

“Friends”, said Ihimaira, “we are all in good health and spirits. I like the travelling about greatly. I have been presented with a valuable ring by a lady of great rank. It cost at least six pounds and contains diamonds set in gold.

“We play our next match on 17th October. “This is a greeting to you all. May God preserve you and the tribe. “From your loving grandchild. “Smiler”. Reasonable implications from this letter are many. Ihimaira was well settled amond friends. He and his comrades had been well received in a strange and foreign country, some of whose people may have been guilty of calling Te Muera Rangitaumaha and his like “niggers”. All concerned were congenially involved in a sport. God, as was to be observed during the following century, had taken steps to preserve grandfather, the tribe and the country. It would be witless to ascribe all of these achievements to Rugby. But Rugby could be used as a witness to the achievement of fusing pakeha and Maori not into one people, in the words of Captain Hobson, but into two peoples mutually growing and mingling and concentrating their efforts into the good of one community of which a

not insubstantial part was to turn out to be Rugby.

Early warriors

Wars or no wars, Maoris must soon have become implicated in the White man’s game. Joe Warbrick, the organiser-in-chief of the Native tour, first kicked a football at St Stephen’s College. He must have been a warrior. As early as 15, he was chosen for Auckland to play Otago. The year was 1877 just seven years, it ought to be noted, since the introduction of Rugby to the colony. Joe was at fullback. The match was at Ellerslie. The game was drawn. Joe left school in the following year and in 1879 played for Wellington against Canterbury, Otago and Nelson. Next year, he was back in Auckland but only as a member of the Wellington side. Some member, too. He dropped the goal from halfway which beat his old team. It was the only score of the match. In 1882, Warbrick, now back in Auckland, played twice against New South Wales, in the following year he toured South with the Auckland team which played Canterbury, Otago and Wellington they weren’t trips, they were expeditions in those days. Next year, 1884, came his first really big moment membership of the New Zealand team which toured in New South Wales. Four other Aucklanders, all Pakehas, were in the team. Joe was a star of the side. He dropkicked goals like a Naas Botha. A man of movement, Warbrick in 1885 captained Hawkes Bay. In 1886, he was back in Auckland, captain of his province when it beat Wellington at Dilworth’s Paddocks now the Mount Hobson hockey fields, one wonders? by two tries, four points, to one try, two points. He also captained Auckland against the visiting New South Welshmen.

Next year, 1887, ten years after his experience in representative play, Warbrick was back in Hawkes Bay for various provincial matches. In 1888, he played for Wellington. The big event was the match against the English team which when it set out from home was under the captaincy of R.L. Seddon, a forward from a leading club of the time, Broughton Rangers. While boating on the Hunter River in New South Wales, Seddon was drowned. A threequarters, A.E. Stoddart, one of the greatest cricketers of his time, took over the leadership. This by modern terms was ineffective, for the team in 19 matches in New Zealand, nine in April-May and the remainder in September-October, won no more than 13. It drew four and lost two. Warbrick’s Wellingtonians were the first to check the English tide when in the fifth match they held Stoddart’s side to a draw, 3-3.

Warbrick, it may be surmised, thought about a return tour of England on the strength of his experience against Stoddart’s team. The word got around. One who listened carefully was

a Manawatu man, Thomas Eyton. While visiting England during Jubilee year, 1887, marking the 50th year of the reign of Queen Victoria, Eyton watched matches at the Rectory Field, then and forever after the home of Blackheath, the first Rugby club to be founded in England. ‘‘l witnessed some important matches”, Eyton wrote. ‘‘lt seemed to me that the play was not vastly superior to that which I had seen in New Zealand. It also seemed to me that if a team from this Colony, especially Maoris or halfcastes, could be taken to England and brought to up-to-date form, the venture would prove a success in every respect”. Eyton entered into correspond-

ence with Warbrick. There were long delays. The crucial problem was finance. The provincial Rugby Unions did not appear to countenance the tour. Their attitude was that no team ought to go unless it was chosen by them and travelled under their management. However, the Rugby Football Union in London, provided they were assured as to the amateur status of the players, was prepared to approve a programme of matches. ‘‘We set forth”, Eyton wrote. He added: ‘‘And here I will ask, in reference to the attitude of the provincial unions, whether any private individuals would make up a sum of 7? 2000 before starting on tour and take a further risk of

another £ 2000 unless they had the right to select the men comprising the tour, and to manage the tour?” He added the pregnant statement: “I trow not.” Cheap fare Some contempt, according to Eyton, was shown of the team when it played its first match. This was against Auckland and was unfortunate. Joe Warbrick’s foot collided with a boundary-post. He was crippled and for most of the tour was unable to display his true form. However, some new and first-class players were taken aboard; and for a price of £ 62 for each second saloon return fare (those were the

days!), passage for 25 was arranged, the fare providing the right to stop at ports of call of the Colonies and to follow on by any ship desired. Eyton and Warbrick headed for Melbourne where they were conned by a Mr Scott who for £ 200 said he would initiate the players into the arts and sciences of what is now Australain Rules football. There was no time to learn, the team were too busy playing Rugby. That £ 200 was sadly regretted. But the expedition set off; and except for another casualty in a forward, Rene, who injured his foot while bathing in the Suez Canal, it arrived in good heart, settled in at Richmond and trained for the first match, at Old Deer Park still going strong against Surrey. The boys were in pretty good nick. As need be, they had taken turns at stoking the ship’s fires as it trundled

from Melbourne to London. Later All Black teams followed the same practice. There are easier jobs of work but they do concentrate the mind quite wonderfully on the importance of physical fitness. Eyton says the team played 108 matches around the world. More recent authorities give the figure as 107. No matter now. Twenty-three of the matches were lost. It was a stupendous exercise in physical fitness; and one can only marvel at the effort of the threequarter or halfback, Davey or “Pony” Gage in playing in 68 of the 74 matches in the United Kingdom. On the return Australia, he had to leave the team because of the illness of a relative. But, eight years later, he was still playing for Auckland. The first team of the side was reckoned to be William Warbrick at fullback, “Barlow” “Runaway

House” Madigan, “Tabby” Wynyard and Gage at threequarters, Fred Warbrick, Paddy Keogh and “Mother” Elliott at halfbacks, Tom Ellison, George Williams, Dick Maynard, Arthur Warbrick, Harold Lee, Bill Anderson, Richard Taiaroa and “Sherry” Wynyard at forward, If I have dwelt at length on this pioneering visit, it is to establish how readily and successfully Maoris were assimilated into and became proficient at Rugby. Their natural gifts of strength, courage and audacity were ideally suited to both attack and defence. The man-to-man contest implicit in honest and well-fought Rugby so well suited the Maori temperament that, in fancy, one is disposed to think William Webb Ellis might have had a touch of the Maori in him when he first picked up the ball and ran with it, thus

originating the distinctive feature of the Rugby game.

An extremely shrewd judge, Irwin Hunter, an Otago medical man, wrote in his book, “New Zealand Rugby Football”, that since the days of the 1888 team, “Maori teams have to me been the most interesting to watch. When I think of that wonderful team which returned to us in 1889 W. Warbrick, Gage, Wynyard, Madigan, Fred Warbrick, Elliott and Keogh, I can never see any back in the 1905 All Blacks displacing any of them”. Praise indeed! Incredible praise when you think of Freddie Roberts, Billy Stead (a Maori), Jimmy Hunter, Bob Deans, George Smith and Billy Wallace, all of them legendary backs of the 1905 side.

Dormant level

Maori Rugby as such was dormant at national level for 22 years after the historic tour. A Maori team captained by Alex Takarangi of Wanganui and managed by Ned Parata of Bay of Plenty then visited Australia for a record of seven wins, two losses and two draws.

Meantime, individual Maoris came to the forefront. Gage captained New Zealand against Queensland in 1896. Bill Cunningham became the enduring lock of the 1905 and other All Black teams. Billy Stead was cited by Hunter as the reason why he, Hunter, was able to tally an unmatchable record of 42 tries for the 1905 All Blacks “without you”, said Hunter, “I would have been nothing”.

Opai Asher was a fantastic player for the unbeaten 1903 All Blacks in Australia, scoring no fewer than 17 tries and dazzling opponents and beholders with his speed and dexterity. Just what Stead and Cunningham meant to the 1905 team may be seen in the fact that one played in 27 and the other in 23 of the 32 matches.

From the pioneering visit to Australia in 1910 began a period of Maori Rugby which may be unequalled. It lasted until the completion of the tour to France, England and Wales by Wattie Barclay’s team in 1926. Maori teams toured to Australia in 1910, 1913, 1922 and 1923, they also toured New Zealand, they played and beat Australia in Auckland on September 27, 1913 (the score was 12 to 9, four tries to three by a famous Australian sprinter, “Slip” Carr), and they lost that muchdisputed match with South Africa at Napier in 1921.

So were preliminaries gone through before the mounting of the long, 40-match tour in New Zealand, Australia, Ceylon, France, England, Wales and Canada. The yield was 30 matches won, eight lost and two drawn. The points record was 741 for and 255 against. In the main part of the tour, 31 matches in France and England-Wales, no more than four penalty goals, or 12

points, figured in the aggregate of 459 points, the tries totalled 109.

The Maoris were a godsend to Australian Rugby. In 1894, Rugby players and supporters in Yorkshire unsuccessfully battled for the principle that players should be compensated for genuine loss of income because of injury. When the proposal was beaten by 282 votes to 136, 12 of the leading clubs in the following year resigned their membership of the Rugby Football Union and formed the Northern Union. By 1898, this became fully professionalised.

Among the 1905 all Blacks who became acquainted with the new code was George Smith. In association with an entrepreneur A.H. Baskerville, who was not dissimilar from Tom Eyton in enterprise, Smith formed a professional team, subsequently known as the All Golds, to tour in the British Isles in 1907. More or less coincidentally, a Sydney Rugby forward named Alick Burdon broke his arm while touring with a New South Wales team. Amid an outcry headed by a Sydney businessman, J.J. Giltinan, and the great cricketer, Victor Trumper, Burdon was refused any form of compensation under the rules of the time.

Their enterprise was stimulated when the All Golds agreed to play three matches in Sydney. Not all was easy going until the great star of Australian Rugby, Dally Messenger, was induced, for a fee of £ 100 a match, to turn to the new game. His transfer excited public interest. An Australian Northern Union team was formed to tour in England. Not entirely by chance, its paths crossed those of the 1908 Wallabies who among other achievements won the gold medal for the Rugby of the Olympic Games. On the return of the two teams to Australia, the Wallabies were placed under siege. By the end of the Sydney season, they departed en masse into Rugby League.

Not less significant was the decision of the New South Wales Rugby Union an Australian union was not formed until 1949 immediately war broke out in August of 1914, to abandon all forms of competition for the duration. Rugby League carried on. The clothcapped brigade, as the supporters of the new game were called, became allpowerful. By the end of hostilities in late 1918, Australian Rugby was reduced to a few clubs in New South Wales. League had taken command in both New South Wales and Queensland; and not for ten years, until 1929, was it possible for an Australian Rugby team to be fielded.

Sustain the Aussies

Thus the Maoris, with their frequent visits and their dashing and exciting play, helped materially to sustain the

Rugby game. Up to, but not including the tour by team, the Maoris against New South Wales and lesser teams in the state and against New Zealand and lesser teams at home won 37 matches, lost 29 and drew 6. All three “tests” with New South Wales in 1923 were lost.

Then came the big tour. The big event was a game against France on Boxing Day, 1926. It was played in fine but bitterly cold weather on an ice-bound field. The crowd at the Colombes Stadium in Paris forever associated with the famous deeds of the Flying Finn, Paavo Nurmi, at the Olympics on the field in 1924 and not less remarkable because Arthur Porritt, son of a Wanganui doctor, won a bronze medal in the 100 metres sprint numbered 30,000.

Regrettably, it was a cheerless game. The Maoris had stage-fright, the French were inept. Barclay scored a try between the sticks to level the score at 3-all at half-time. In the second half, Albert Falwasser, one of the greatest of Maori backs, flew down the touchline to score in the corner, Bill Rika capped off a fine forward effort and Barclay, brilliant indeed on the day, scored yet again.

Including the 1926 tour, therefore, the Maoris between 1910 and 1926 won 67, lost 37 and drew eight of the 112 matches. No bad record, by any standards. The going was toughest in Eng-land-Wales, where six of 16 matches were lost, mostly to the strong Welsh clubs. But Cardiff were twice beaten and Swansea, too, always a strong club, also was defeated.

Winston McCarthy has propounded the theory that the 1926 team acquainted the French with the virtues of slick passing, feint-plays and artful dodging and that, thereafter, the French developed a mastery of these arts. The idea makes sense. Barclay himself has said that the First XV was a good one. Players like Barclay himself, Albert Falwasser, Dick Pelham, Willie Shortland and Waata Potaka were either All Blacks or near-misses, they had excellent records in provincial Rugby and their play in the backline was distinguished by speed, skill and audacity precisely the qualities which were to make the French, after World War Two, the most vital of all of the countries in big-time international Rugby. Had the ’26 team the luck to include George Nepia and Jimmy Mill of the 1924 All Blacks and Jack Blake, who became an All Black in 1925, the backline would have been fit to compare with the great Scottish line of about 1924-25 when the four threequarters, George Aitken, a New Zealander, Johnny Wallace, an Australian, and Phil MacPherson and lan Smith of Scotland were reckoned to be the fastest and most dangerous in history.

McCarthy’s is an interesting theory. It is, I think, tenable no impressionable person who saw the leading Maori players of the 1920 s ever forgot the experience. Fijians unbeaten Between 1926 and the outbreak of war in 1939, one Maori team toured to Australia (in 1935), others either toured in New Zealand or played individual matches against the All Blacks, the British of 1930 and Australian teams and made the first acquaintance with Fiji. This last-mentioned experience was a tour in 1938. It was a battle royal in each of the three tests. The first test was drawn, 3-3, the second was won by Fiji by 11 to 5 and in the third the Maoris got home by 6 to 3. This was a formidable achievement by the Fijians. Next year, they became the first un-

beaten team ever to tour through New Zealand. They won seven matches and drew the other and were pretty decisively the better of the Maoris in the test at Hamilton. Fiji won by 14 to 4; and, interestingly, were captained by George Cakobau while Penaia Ganilua played on the flank of the scrum. Ratu Sir George Cakobau has been Governor-General of Fiji for a number of years and is the highest ranking of all Fijian chiefs. Ratu Penaia has been a senior Minister in the Fijian Government of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara as well as president of the Giji Fiji Rugby Union. The Maoris who toured Australia in 1935 had on the whole an excellent record, beating New South Wales two out of three, sharing two matches with Queensland and ending with a record of nine won out of 11 played. Back home, the team lost to Wellington, 9 to

11 and beat Auckland, 14 to 10 notable performances, both, because the provinces were both strong. Nepia, by now an “old” man 30 years, was a staggering success in Australia and fine players included Jack Hemi, a utility back with a huge kick, Charlie Smith and Wally Phillips, who were outstanding wings, Tommy Chase, a nifty five-eighths, and Hawea Mataira, who was later to become an All Black. Performances in the period from 1927 to 1939 were, on the whole good; but, in truth, Maori Rugby had slightly gone off the boil. For much of this period, New Zealand was gripped by a savage depression. It was not easy for young men, whatever their race, to concentrate upon sport when so much of their life was spent in hardship. Another factor was the decline in the general standard of New Zealand Rugby which followed the visit of the

British team in 1930. The manager of the team, James Baxter, a toffee-nosed pukka Sahib of the old school denounced the wing-forward of the New Zealand 2-3-2 formation as a “cheat”. The accusation, which was not ill founded as Baxter pointed out, such a forward, playing urtder a referee who was indulgent, turned into a champion obstructionist preceded a change in the laws of the game. This required that three men should pack in the front row of the scrummage. Controversy racked all of New Zealand Rugby. The country, it was alleged had been sold down the river by the conniving British. A serious decline in forward play became noticeable.

When the 1935 All Blacks toured in Britain, they were outscrummed in many early matches and were made to learn, the hard way, that a forward’s first duty was to bind tightly in the scrum, put his nose close to the ground and push like billyoh. The 1937 Springboks, though beaten in the opening test, cleaned out the All Blacks in the threetest series, winning the last match by 17 to 6, five tries to none; and they administered quite terrible hidings to Otago and Southland, provinces which were said to be the home of the best of New Zealand forward play of the time.

The decade of the 1930 s was a soulshattering time for all of New Zealand Rugby. Nor did the Maoris escape. They still played with bounced and verve. But the skills were not quite so pronounced. Their finest players were not quite so distinctive as during the 19205.

The decline

Maori Rugby from the end of the Second World War achieved distinctions, suffered disabilities, became involved in the strife generated by the associations of New Zealand and South African rugby, was threatened for a time with extinction as an entity of New Zealand Rugby and finally, after traversing dark tunnels and mounting of the rocky roads with many a turning, emerged into the triumph of the expedition to Wales and Spain in 1982.

Let us first deal with the problems which so seriously threatened Maori Rugby as such. The first and worst was the match played at Eden Park on August 25, 1956, against Basie Vivers’ Springboks. Very oddly, the New Zealand union arranged a four-match tour for the team in June and early July. The opposing sides, West Coast, West-Coast-Buller, Nelson-Marlborough-Golden Bay-Motueka and South Canter-bury-Mid-Canterbury and North Otago, were not of the first class and there were ominous signs that the Maoris might not be, too, when they beat West Coast only by 26-20 and South Canterbury combined by 18 to 15. As a cur-tain-raiser to the match with the Boks,

the Maoris played the new Counties team three days beforehand and won, convincingly enough, by 30 to 3. But the fixture with the Springboks was torment from end to end. The Maoris were cut to pieces, 37 nil. Their apparently excellent backline of Keith Davies, Jimmy Taitoko, Bill Gray, Dave Menzies, Pat Walsh, Tom Katene and Muru Walters, saw nothing of the ball. The forwards were demolished. “Peewee” Howe, a brilliant flyhalf, whizzed at will past Taitoko, Walsh was no less uneasy in defence and Gray couldn’t even catch a cold. It was a devastating experience which had a numbing effect upon Maori Rugby for a long, long time to come.

Two years later, Walsh captained the Maoris on a tour of Australia. On the face of things, the record of nine matches won, two lost and one drawn was satisfactory. In three internationals, Australia won at Brisbane, 15-14, the second test at Sydney was drawn, 3-3, and the Maoris won the final test Melbourne, 13 to 6. Walsh, Maurice Raureti, Gray, Teddy Thompson, Eddie Whatarau, Davis and, in the forwards, Albert Pryor, Howard Paiaka, Bill Wordley and Munga Emergy were all provincial players, or better, of merit; and Ron Bryers, who had been an outstanding member of Sonny West’s Maoris who in 1949 had shared the three-test series while winning nine of their 11 matches, was to become an exceptional selector-coach in the Bay of Plenty, was well spoken of as a capable man on the job.

But the expedition was, despite its apparent success and the congenial relationship of the players with their manager, Frank Kilby, a misfortune. Play in many matches was exceptionally robust. Australians were angered when their Wallabies were unable to devour a team of less than full national strength. The tour ended in sourness. It was said by leading Australian administrators that they would not again welcome a Maori team.

This was an unpalatable experience. So soon after the loss to the Springboks, it generated a cooling of relationships at senior administrative level between pakeha and Maori. When, in 1959, a movement swept through the country in protest at the impending exclusion of Maoris, because of their colour, from the All Blacks who were to tour South Africa in 1960, many pakehas blamed the Maoris as the cause of all troubles. More than 20 years passed before a Maori team was again seen in Australia.

The visit of the team captained by Mac McCallion of Counties was fleeting versus Queensland, drawn 18-18, New South Wales Country under floodlights won 22-3, and New South Wales at Sydney, won 15-12. But it would be impossible to rate too highly the diplomatic successes of its visit in 1979.

Queensland at the time were exceptionally strong, much too much so for most New Zealand provincial sides. To hold the side to a draw was an admirable effort. New South Wales were no sluggards, either.

Most decisively of all, the Maoris were well appreciated by the Australians. On and off the field, they broke down a great icy barrier and undoubtedly boosted the prospects for a major tour for a Maori team prospects which turned into gold with the arrangements for the visit to Wales.

In between the trough which was the South Africa-Australia experience of the late 1950 s and the crest which was the McCallion visit to Australia-South Pacific and the Paul Quinn visit to Wales, Maori Rugby at the highest level subsisted on a diet of Prince of Wales Cup matches followed by games against New Zealand provinces, return visits to Fiji and by Fijians, tours by Tongan and Western Samoan sides and, the great development, the inclusion of Maoris in the All Black teams which toured South Africa in 1970 and 1976.

As related elsewhere, the politics of these times were rough and tough for Maori Rugby. It was commonplace to hear sneeering references to “our brown brothers” among leading administrators. Men of the mana of Norman McKenzie, famous as the sole-selector-coach of the great Hawkes Bay teams of the 19205, had passed on or were no longer interested. Their absence was crucial. From intimate association with Maoris in Rugby, they could clearly see both sides of the story and were sympathetic to the problems of the Maori people. It was a difficult time.

Just as it would be impossible to overstress the importance of the McCallion team’s visit to Australia, so it would be impossible to overstress the value and importance of the visit to Wales. Long had the Maoris wanted a true place in the sun of world Rugby. Their encounters in South Pacific Rugby were often exciting, play was ardent, if not fierce and fine games by fine players were a consequence. But men of the experience of Ben Couch, Waka Nathan and other leaders could see that the Maori’s right to a real identity in international Rugby was being withheld. On the strength of achievements dating all the way back to 1888, they deserved more.

The great triumph of 1982 was that, despite all vicissitudes before and during the tour, the Maoris departed to Wales with the support of all men of good will in New Zealand Rugby. They had marched for a long time through a valley of discord and troubles and petty animosities, they had been blamed for misdeeds not of their own making; and at the last, by steady going, had proved themselves as worthy not only of the great men among their forbears but of all that was best in Rugby.