Pitched Battle

by Larry Writer

  The players now wrote to the Australian Rugby Union, to confirm what they had told Geoffrey Robertson: if selected, they would not play against the Springboks. Their decision was unprecedented in Australian rugby union: no player had ever refused to represent his country on political grounds.

  When he received their letter, ARU president Charles Blunt was not happy. In an attempt to persuade them to reconsider, he invited them to the City Tattersalls Club in Sydney. ‘Blunt bought us wine and was very nice, thinking we’d be a soft touch and change our minds,’ remembers Barry McDonald. ‘Then we told him we’d made our decision and had no intention of changing it, and he suddenly got really pissed off. At the end, he said, “Well, OK, if you’ve made up your mind, but I don’t want you going to the press and speaking out against the tour. Just keep your feelings to yourself.” Rox and I said, “We can’t go along with that, and as a matter of fact we’re going to do everything we possibly can to stop this tour.” Then he got really shitty.’ Blunt accused the players of being manipulated by communists. Roxburgh bristled at the remark. ‘I was not respectful. I said, “No, that’s not true. It’s ridiculous.”’

  Bruce Taafe remembers the meeting with Blunt at City Tattersalls this way: ‘Charlie was a mate, he was on the committee at my club, Gordon, and he was a really good guy. He said, “Look, I understand your concerns, but I think you need to divorce politics and sport.” I told him, “Charlie, this isn’t politics, this is skin, apartheid is not about whether you make a choice to follow one or another political party, it’s discrimination based on the colour of your skin. Tell me where in the world, apart from South Africa, that skin colour determines whether you can play for a sporting team. Nowhere.” He said, “Bruce, it’s still politics. I don’t agree with you and, to be honest, a lot of your teammates don’t agree with you either.” I said, “I understand some of the guys disagree with our refusing to play against the Springboks, but what I do know is that every single one agrees that the South African government is a terrible regime.” He argued, “That’s right, they dislike the system, but they’re still willing to play rugby; surely you can play, too?” I said, “I don’t think we can, Charlie.” He said, “Please understand my position. I’m running the ARU and I know the way Australia feels and the federal government feels and the premiers feel, they want the tour to proceed. If you don’t make yourself available, you will be sacrificing your future as a Wallaby.” He emphasised the word “sacrificing”. We all said, “Yes, we understand that.” My decision didn’t end my friendship with Charlie or his personal support, and nor did it end the support of my club, where around 90 per cent of members believed I should play. I’ll never hear a bad word about Charlie or the club.’

  Interviewed for a television current-affairs program soon after the City Tattersalls meeting with Taafe, McDonald, and Roxburgh, Charles Blunt grumbled, ‘I was rather disappointed in these young players, and highly respected players too, great international players, in taking this attitude. It seems to me to be bringing politics into the sport of rugby, which we’ve always avoided.’ Soon after, interviewed on Channel 9 by Mike Willesee, Blunt opined that South Africa was still a member of the United Nations, still a trading partner of Australia, still had defence pacts with Australia, ‘so isn’t it a bit ridiculous to think they can’t play sport with us?’

  ‘I have never doubted that I made the right decision,’ says Barry McDonald today. ‘It was simply the right thing to do, and after what I’d said in the Blackacre article it would have been hypocritical to do anything else. All this is true. What’s not is that it was a big sacrifice for me to make. By then, I was ready to call a halt to rugby. Gee, I was in my 30s, I’d had enough of spending months away from home on tour and training hard and not getting paid. I had a life to lead and bills to pay, a mortgage. I’d already turned down a Wallaby trip to New Zealand after we returned from South Africa. Did I really want to get bashed around again by the Boks and receive only so-called glory for it? I was carrying a busted shoulder, busted knees … let someone younger do it. We weren’t like today’s players earning 600 grand a year. We earned nothing. I’d only played two tests and would have liked to play more, I suppose, but it wasn’t a big deal. James Roxburgh gave up more than I did. He was a fabulous footballer, just 24, possibly our best forward and with a long Wallaby career ahead of him …’

  James Roxburgh, like McDonald and indeed the others, has never grandstanded about his decision. ‘I’ve not taken great credit for what we did because I couldn’t have looked at myself in the mirror if I hadn’t protested against the tour.’ Roxburgh, who was sure that the anti-Springbok demonstrations that had had occurred in Britain in 1969–70 would be repeated in Australia, realised that ‘if I run on and I’m running past a protester, I [would feel strange playing, as I] agree with the protesters. I thought, “How can I play against the Springboks’ racially selected team when I agree with the people who are protesting against them?”’

  The players’ defection was raised at a meeting of the ARU. A vote was taken, and 21 of the 25 delegates voted for the tour to proceed. Bill Randall of the Northern Suburbs club warned that if the Springboks’ visit was cancelled, ‘we are going to allow a minority group to tell rugby what to do … A lot of people are going to call us a weak bunch …’ Australian selector Bill McLaughlin (who had been manager of the 1963 Wallabies to South Africa) slammed the players: ‘To slate South Africa after they have been there and enjoyed their hospitality is a slur on those players. I am not proud of them at all.’ Alan Roper, who coached the 1963 Wallabies, added, ‘Politics, as far as the South African government is concerned, is their business and nothing to do with rugby.’ In advocating a vote for the tour to proceed, Charles Blunt proclaimed that the integrity of the game of rugby union itself was at stake.

  A notable dissenter was the renowned coach Bryan Palmer, who said that of course black people should be allowed to play rugby; the code was so wonderful everyone should play it. ‘Ever since I’ve been a grown man, this game of rugby has developed not just for whites but for every human being, irrespective of his colour, class, or creed. They have always had the right to play for their country, whether it be here in Australia or anywhere else. Nothing will shake me in this regard. Any country that differs from this, I want to have nothing to do with or have them in my country.’ While the crusty coach’s words filled CARIS’s John Myrtle with ‘awe and respect’, his stand put him well offside with many rugby people. One committeeman brayed, ‘Mr Palmer wants a couple of big buck niggers in the team. South Africa’s hard enough to beat without negroes in the side. Let’s forget this rubbish of black, white, and brindle. The fact there are no coloureds in the team is no skin off our nose.’

  ‘[The anti-apartheid Labor MP] Barry Cohen contacted the footballers and invited us to dinner,’ recalls Barry McDonald. ‘He said he intended to raise what we’d done in federal parliament and asked us to address MPs in Canberra. We said we would, so long as all members of all parties were invited, not just the Labor Party, because we wanted this to be above politics. Only Cohen and Gough Whitlam turned up.’

  Despite their falling out with the ARU, Roxburgh and McDonald were selected to play for the Wallabies against Scotland in the standalone test at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 6 June 1970; Darveniza was a reserve. This was the last time the trio were chosen for their country, even though McDonald and Roxburgh played strongly in Australia’s 23–3 victory over the Scots. Darveniza and Terry Forman retired that year to travel, study, and work. Abrahams’ Wallaby career was effectively over because he was immersed in his legal career in Europe. Bruce Taafe played on, and in a more forgiving time represented Australian again, in a test against France at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1972. ‘I wanted to keep playing at a high standard even though I was on the outer, because I had a point to prove,’ says Taafe. ‘When the Whitlam Government cut ties with South Africa in 1972, I found myself back in the fold and was chosen to play
a test. I had a good game in one of the dirtiest matches ever and even fell over the line to score a try. Afterwards, Charlie Blunt congratulated me. I said, “Charlie, I didn’t play too badly for a guy who was never going to play for Australia again.”’

  The stand taken by Roxburgh, Darveniza, Barry McDonald, and, although they weren’t in contention to be Wallabies at that time, Bruce Taafe, Terry Forman, Anthony Abrahams, and Jim Boyce, lent credibility and respectability to the Australian anti-apartheid movement at a time when many Australians, when they thought of it at all, regarded it as just another organisation of student and far-left-wing rent-a-crowd rabble-rousers who had found a new cause now that the Vietnam War was winding down.

  ‘Tony Abrahams’ letter to The Sydney Morning Herald [and] Geoffrey Robertson’s Blackacre and The Australian interview with the Wallabies who were refusing to play against the 1971 Springboks were godsends to the anti-apartheid movement in Australia,’ attests John Myrtle today. ‘For my organisation, CARIS, and the more radical Anti-Apartheid Movement, they were a stimulus for action.’ Myrtle now contacted Roxburgh, Darveniza, Taafe, McDonald, and Forman and asked them if they would be prepared to speak out against the tour at public gatherings and in the media and take their place at the peaceful vigils CARIS was planning for the Springbok tour. (Terry Forman assured CARIS of his support from afar.)

  ‘Unlike Jim, Rox, and Barry, I never stood vigil with CARIS, advising people not to enter the rugby ground,’ says Bruce Taafe. ‘My personal statement was to refuse to play, and I was happy to address meetings of anti-apartheid people, but I was never involved with standing outside the grounds or protesting, because I didn’t feel I had a right to try to stop rugby fans attending the games. My position was to not support the tour in any way and so I never went to a match, but others had a right to see the matches unhindered if they so desired.’

  One of Roxburgh’s speaking engagements was at a sportsmen’s dinner at Concord, west of Sydney, and after he gave an impassioned speech about why his conscience would not allow him to play against the Springboks when they toured, and that he hoped everyone present would think hard about apartheid and follow their own conscience, the head man at the club thanked him and called for a warm round of applause from the audience … and then told Roxburgh that he hoped he would change his mind.

  The same day that the Geoffrey Robertson interview ran in The Australian, Jim Boyce caught a taxi to Circular Quay and was happily surprised to see that its driver was none other than Barry McDonald. ‘That cab ride changed my life,’ says Boyce today. ‘Barry asked me my thoughts on the planned Springbok tour, and I said that in my view the tour should not take place. He agreed with me 100 per cent, then told me that he, Anthony Abrahams, James Roxburgh, Paul Darveniza, Bruce Taafe, and Terry Forman were working with CARIS, which I knew was an offshoot of SADAF, where I’d served as John Brink’s treasurer, to campaign against the tour. Would I be interested in joining them? I didn’t know Anthony, James, Bruce, and Terry all that well, but I did know Barry and Paul, who had both played club rugby with me for Eastern Suburbs in 1965, and, of course, I knew John Myrtle. I’d be working alongside good people for a good cause. I told Barry that I was in.’

  And so the group who would become known as the Rugby Seven were now together in their opposition to apartheid and the upcoming Springbok tour of Australia.

  Jim Boyce would be a dedicated campaigner, working as treasurer of CARIS, speaking at schools and colleges and other public forums all over Australia, and writing for publications. He would also be front and centre with some of the other anti-apartheid Wallabies at the peaceful vigils at the Springbok matches the following year.

  On the 1963 Wallaby tour, John Vorster, then South Africa’s justice minister, had cornered Boyce at a post-match function and told him, ‘No black man will ever wear a Springbok jersey.’ So when Boyce joined CARIS, one of the first things he did was present the four Springbok jerseys he’d brought home with him to prominent Aboriginal activists Gary Foley, Paul Coe, Billy Craigie, and Gary Williams. They would garner wide publicity and mortify the advocates of apartheid when they wore them while demonstrating against the Springboks the following year. ‘I thought it important that the issue of racism against Aboriginal people should not be lost,’ says Boyce.

  Boyce also joined Roxburgh, McDonald, Darveniza, Taafe, and Forman when they lent their names and reputations to a four-page leaflet that was printed in its thousands by John Myrtle on his home printing press and handed out at matches and rallies.

  The leaflet, titled Australia–South Africa: an appeal from some Wallabies and with a front-page photo of Australian and South African players competing hard for a ball in a match on the veldt, included a joint statement signed by the footballers: ‘We have all played football for Australia and there are two things that we have in common: (1) We have all toured South Africa with a Wallaby rugby union team; (2) As a result of what we saw in South Africa, we would not play against South Africa again, under present conditions.’

  Under the heading ‘Apartheid and Sport’, the players declared, ‘Apartheid sets out to divide and humiliate non-white people in South Africa, and apartheid policies are rigidly applied in sport: Non-whites in South Africa can only compete against other non-whites; Non-white spectators are segregated — in severely limited sub-standard wire cages.’ Beneath the headline ‘Non-White Rugby in South Africa’, the players continued:

  The President of the Cape Coloured Rugby Union in 1969 expressed the desire of his non-white Union to play against Australia. He regretted that this was not possible at present.

  All sportsmen want to keep politics out of sport. However we are convinced that it is the South African Government, and not its critics, whose policies are causing the division in world sport today. South Africa should not be allowed to dictate terms to the rest of the world. They have told the M.C.C. that its cricket team could not tour South Africa with Basil D’Oliveira [a South African of Indian-Portuguese descent, who, as a coloured, could not play for South Africa, so plied his trade in England and represented his adopted homeland]. Many other non-white sportsmen have also been denied the dubious privilege of playing in South Africa.

  Australia, by sending teams to South Africa and welcoming all-white Springbok teams here, is condoning the racial policy of South Africa. In a world of increasing international competition between sportsmen of different races and political creeds, it is South Africa that is seeking, by insisting on distinctions based on racialism, to impose her unsavoury political standards on the world.

  We have written to the Australian Rugby Union stating our complete opposition to the proposed tour of Australia by the Springbok team, and have requested that the tour be cancelled. We appeal for your support in this matter and on the back of this leaflet have listed ways in which you can help. [One such way was to write letters of protest to Charles Blunt at Rugby Union House in Crane Place, Sydney.]

  We stress that we would never condone violent action or demonstrations which might infringe the civil liberties of the individual citizen …

  We have already had some support for the campaign in Australia. For example, the Australian Council of Churches’ annual meeting in August 1970 called for the cancellation of the Springbok tour …

  Other signatories to the pamphlet were federal Opposition leader Gough Whitlam; author Patrick White; South Australian premier Don Dunstan; poet Judith Wright; publisher, philanthropist, and leader of the niche Australia Party Gordon Barton; and the Rev. Alan Walker.

  ‘That was a very useful leaflet,’ says John Myrtle. ‘It reached a tremendous number of people, and the participation of the rugby players and the other distinguished signatories made many who thought that all those who protested against the Springboks were ratbags think again.’

  The first time the pamphlet was handed out was at a match between New South Wales and Queensland. Then it was distributed at the 1970 Sydney r
ugby grand final between Sydney University and Eastern Suburbs at Sydney Sports Ground. James Roxburgh captained the students to a 24–14 victory. ABC-TV’s Four Corners was preparing a program on the anti-apartheid movement, and after the match the show’s reporter Gordon Bick interviewed a sweaty, muddy, and out of breath Roxburgh, who looked into the camera and said, ‘It might have been possible to play South Africa in the past but now it’s not … I don’t see how you can invite a side out here that chooses a side according to race without endorsing their policies.’

  John Myrtle was one of the many out on the field after the match, ‘and I witnessed Jim’s interview and was ecstatic. What wonderful exposure. I was overjoyed. I was even interviewed by Bick and was so excited I stuttered and stammered … Oh, Jesus, I was a useless spokesman. I still cringe. John Brink asked his daughter Georgina what she made of my performance for the Four Corners cameras and she said, “Oh well, it showed that his heart was in it!” We were blessed that those footballers were so intelligent and articulate.’

  Another thing that Myrtle will never forget from that grand-final day was when the captain of Eastern Suburbs, Peter Crittle, a conservative rugby man in favour of the Springboks tour, approached James Roxburgh. Myrtle expected a harsh exchange, but no. ‘Crittle slapped Jim on the back and congratulated him: “Oh, matey, you took us to the cleaners today!” And Jim thanked him warmly and gave him a hug. I thought, “Why are you being so civilised to this bastard?” The reason they could be civil was that they, and other pro-tour men such as John Hipwell and Rupert Rosenblum, were decent fellows who respected each other and were agreeing to disagree. I was young, passionate, and political and saw life in absolute black and white.’ Not all of those from the pro- and anti- camps in the months ahead would be as civil as Crittle and Roxburgh. Says Myrtle, ‘There was one player who went up to Roxburgh at Sydney University training and told him straight out that he was an absolute bloody disgrace. To him, Jim and the others had betrayed the game.’