Pitched Battle

by Larry Writer

  Along with Abrahams, the coming tour would have a profound effect on Roxburgh, Darveniza, McDonald, Forman, and the Gordon hooker Bruce Taafe, and they in turn would go on to influence greatly the way many Australians viewed apartheid.

  Tough and resolute front-rower James Roxburgh was born in 1946, far from rugby’s heartland, in Wudinna, South Australia, a small country town — fittingly, given 85-kilogram Roxburgh’s steely performances against bigger forwards, in granite country. His parents were doctors, his father the Flying variety. It was said of the shy and self-effacing Roxburgh in the rugby book They Came to Conquer that ‘what he lacked in size was balanced by his total effort’. He attended the King’s School near Sydney’s Parramatta, excelling in athletics, rowing, and rugby. From Sydney University firsts (he was doing an arts-law degree), Roxburgh was chosen in the Sydney, New South Wales, and Australian sides, and the first of his nine tests for Australia was against New Zealand at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1968. Following a second test against the All Blacks, Roxburgh was chosen to play against the touring French, and then in 1969 against Wales. His efforts were lauded by rugby writer Jim Webster, who wrote, ‘None played better than light tight prop James Roxburgh who covered an enormous amount of ground. It’s amazing how, after wrestling around in the front row, he can summon the extra energy to do the work normally reserved for a back-row forward.’ He had been a certain selection for South Africa.

  Paul Darveniza, who was born in 1941 and grew up in Warwick, Queensland, like Abrahams attended Cranbrook and the University of Sydney, where he studied medicine. He played hooker for Sydney University and hooker and occasionally prop for Australia. He was second-string hooker to Peter Johnson on the Wallabies’ 1968 tour of Ireland and Scotland, and joined Abrahams, Roxburgh, and Terry Forman in the Australian team that played Wales at the SCG in June 1969, the day before the South African tour. His main rival for the Wallaby hooking role was Bruce Taafe, and the pair, both skilled and aggressive players, would share the role in South Africa. An irreverent, ebullient man, Darveniza tells today how he was known for never shrinking from a fight, a quality that came in handy against the Springboks. ‘As a kid, I could box a bit … Well, I wasn’t such a good boxer, but I was rough and tough. On my first day at Cranbrook, I told another 13-year-old boy who was a boxing champ that he was an idiot, and he challenged me to a fight. They set it up at the Cranbrook gym at lunchtime with boxing gloves and a ring, and many boys came to watch. My opponent came out fast, dancing and sparring. I clobbered him once and just about killed him. The fight was called off before the end of the first round. Another fight was arranged for me, and such was my newfound fame at Cranbrook, I could hardly say no. The kid I was up against was a year older. He was bigger than me, but didn’t look much … and this time it was me who was nearly killed. I have never received a greater hiding, not even by the Springboks. A total embarrassment. I learned my lesson that day. Just when you’re full of yourself and you think you’re invincible, that’s when you get belted. Not that I stopped being a feisty bugger.’ He and Bruce Taafe, Darveniza says, ‘had some terrific battles, in grade football when Bruce played for Gordon and I was with Sydney University, and then as Wallabies for the hooker’s jumper. We were combatants and now we’re very good friends.’

  Barry McDonald, born in New Guinea in 1940, was a late starter, at age 29, for the Wallabies. He was another who played above his weight (82 kilograms), and became a vital member of the Australian side for his speed to the breakdown and never-say-die attitude against larger opponents. He, too, attended Cranbrook School (on a legacy scholarship after his father was killed in World War II when McDonald was four; although, he says, ‘The only thing that kept me at Cranbrook was that I made the Associated Schools first XV’) and, for a short while, Sydney University, studying music. The likeable knockabout was a dab hand on the piano. His first test match would be in the Fourth Test against the Springboks on the ’69 tour, and his second and last was against Scotland in 1970, a game in which he was man of the match. The tour of South Africa was a coming of age for McDonald, who confesses that before he went away, ‘I was a political ignoramus. I couldn’t even spell “apartheid”. My life was football, friends, a few beers. I didn’t see my touring as condoning apartheid. I just thought it was their system.’

  Terry Forman, born in 1941, was a lightning-fast winger and sometime centre. Forman enjoyed an idyllic boyhood growing up in Connells Point on the Georges River in Sydney’s south. His family was close, and he was a prodigiously talented sportsman who excelled in both rugby codes, diving, squash, athletics, and swimming. His football hero was the mercurial St George rugby league champion Reg Gasnier, and ‘while I was no Gasnier, I was fast, could swerve and step, and loved to challenge myself in a contact sport. I had a go. I played five-eighth and centre at primary and high school, and only moved to the wing when I was playing for Sydney University when doing a Bachelor of Science degree.

  ‘I had a premonition that I would play for Australia and travel the world. My coach in my weekend Sylvania side when I was 10 or 11 was the former Wallaby “Wild Bill” Cerutti, an incredible character. One Saturday after our match, Bill took me up to see the St George rugby union team play at Hurstville Oval, and in introducing me to one of the players, he put an arm around my shoulder and said, “Meet Terry Forman. This young bloke will play for Australia.” Wow! I had a gut feeling that Bill’s prediction might come true. At age 17 in 1965, I went to see the South Africans play at Sydney Sports Ground and dared to wonder if next time they were here in a few years’ time I might be opposing them. It seemed a stretch, they looked so big and were very tough. They had an awesome winger, Jannie Engelbrecht. I had a reality check and thought, “No, I’d be out of my depth in that company.” Then things fell into place, I made Sydney University firsts when one of the Boyce twins was injured, then my boyhood premonition came true when I was chosen on the wing for Australia and toured Ireland and Scotland and played in all the tests, and was selected to tour South Africa with the 1969 Wallabies. As I progressed from teen to adult, there was a big transition and suddenly I found myself in the world I’d been looking at in wonder. Of course, it was my destiny to line up against Jannie Engelbrecht. By then my Sydney University coach Dave Brockhoff had taught me to do an in-and-away without losing pace, and I stood Jannie up and he was subsequently dropped. The South Africans said, “Forman has the feet on Engelbrecht.”’

  Forman’s father, Ken, passed down to him his sense of social justice. ‘Dad could do anything with his hands, he could build anything, including boats. He loved the sea. He did his fitting and turning apprenticeship with the tramworks in Randwick, then got his marine engineer’s ticket. He joined the merchant navy and travelled the world, and witnessed the exploitation of working people in China and of the blacks in South Africa and he hated it. Dad told me and my brother Patrick all about it, and we both fought that kind of oppression in later life. When I made the Wallaby tour of South Africa, Dad said, “Now you’ll see for yourself what I’ve been talking about.”’

  Bruce Taafe was a Knox Grammar old boy who played for Gordon. He would play three tests for Australia. Although they became great mates, Taafe got off on the wrong foot with James Roxburgh and his archrival Paul Darveniza. Laughs Roxburgh, ‘Bruce was a bit of a prick when we played against him in club football. He talked a fair bit on the field and I thought he was a smart arse. But when we went to South Africa, all was forgiven. I mean, you couldn’t help liking him. He was a terrific companion. He can be quite naive. Barry McDonald had a card trick that fooled Bruce every time. Bruce would exclaim, “That’s incredible! You must be psychic!” Barry was cheating of course.’

  Taafe, a sweet-natured man with a wicked sense of humour, was born in Richmond in Melbourne and moved with his family to Ballarat and Hamilton in Victoria, then to Adelaide, back to Melbourne, and then Wellington, New Zealand, where he learned to play rugby union and became a schoolboy champion. Af
ter primary school, he came to Sydney and attended Knox Grammar, and was chosen in the Associated Schools firsts team. ‘Ant Abrahams was in the firsts with me, and Paul Darveniza was picked in the seconds. The three of us had some tremendous battles when Knox played Cranbrook. Darv and I made the New South Wales under-21 team. He was hooker and I was prop. When we faced each other for our club sides, Gordon and Sydney University, it was on for young and old. I didn’t mind trying to establish an edge with a bit of chat to wind him up and put him off his game as he tried to get square. James Roxburgh was Darv’s prop at Sydney Uni, and our forward John Sheerin, who became a successful actor, and I niggled Rox, too, and really enjoyed that. Rox hated me, hated me. We went at each other on the field. Jim was easy to rile because while he’s the most humble, relaxed man off the field, when he played he was incredibly intense and always took my bait. From those tempestuous days, we’ve all become the very best of friends.’

  Taafe fit in well with the Sydney Uni men. Says Terry Forman of him, ‘Part of Bruce’s great gift is his wonderful openness to people and new ideas. When he realised what we were thinking, about publicly opposing apartheid, he said, “I’m in!” Like us, he cared about social justice, and was a romantic. We liked to be inspired. Ant Abrahams was the intellectual driver of our group, but without heart we would never have achieved anything. You need head and heart.’

  CHAPTER 4

  CONFRONTING APARTHEID

  From the moment the Wallabies’ plane landed at Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg, and 10,000 South Africans turned for their first glimpse of the enemy, Anthony Abrahams was sickened by what he saw all around him. ‘Apartheid hit you immediately and kept hitting you all the way on the 60-kilometre trip to our hotel in Vereeniging,’ he recalls. ‘You could cut the tension with a knife. There were signs saying “Whites Only” and “No Blacks Allowed”. The atmosphere I found oppressive, if not repressive. This was a society in the throes of relentless anguish.’

  Among the things that stuck fast in James Roxburgh’s craw was that when the Wallabies were taken to ooh and ahh at the beaches in Durban, ‘They were segregated: whites-only and blacks-only beaches.’ There is a photo of a group of players standing alongside a sign that reads, in both English and Afrikaans, ‘Public Notice: This area is reserved for the sole use of white persons. Bathing areas have been reserved for non-white persons as follows: Bantu — Approximately half a mile north of this area. Coloureds and Asiatics — Approximately 500 yards north of Country Club Beach.’ ‘Coming from a free and easy place like Australia,’ says Roxburgh, ‘that hit me hard.’

  Barry McDonald, too, was galled by the persecution of non-whites. It seemed that South Africa was run ‘like a Nazi state … blacks had no political or social rights’. Blacks approached the Wallabies in the street and begged them to beat the Springboks. Says Terry Forman, ‘We had something in common because we were both underdogs. They were downtrodden in every way, and we were going to struggle against a great South African team.’

  Paul Darveniza, who had just completed his final year of medicine at the University of Sydney, visited black hospitals, which he found ill-equipped and overcrowded. Darveniza was shocked to see that white and black doctors had separate change rooms, bathrooms, and coffee rooms. He realised early that he could never return to South Africa to play football again under that regime. ‘South Africa was a racist country. Discrimination was everywhere. Some whites did not consider non-whites to be human beings. This discrimination pervaded the tour from beginning to end, and I felt compromised by it. So did Ant, James, Barry, Terry, and Bruce, and a number of the other players. I couldn’t wait to get out of the place … but we had a job to do for Australian rugby. I tried to put my distaste aside to play the best I could.’

  Bruce Taafe was struck by the difference between the way non-whites were treated in South Africa and New Zealand where he had grown up. ‘I was greatly influenced by my time in New Zealand at the impressionable age of from five to 14. Maoris were completely integrated in New Zealand society. They accepted whites and whites accepted them, and they were enriched by each other’s culture. At Karori Normal School, we learned the Maori names for plants and learned traditional dances including the haka. We came to know the great connection the Maoris had with the land. South Africa as I knew it in 1969 with the Wallabies could not have been more different. Finding myself in the middle of an apartheid society after that beautiful New Zealand upbringing was a terrible shock to the system. As the Wallabies travelled around South Africa, I identified with the non-whites and grew furious at the treatment the minority whites dealt them.’

  Taafe was injured early on the tour and was allowed time off, which enabled him to accept an invitation to visit a farm on the veldt. This was the family farm of an air-force test pilot he’d met. ‘On this farm, blacks worked for pitiful wages, and the agricultural machinery was basic because why would the farmer, the pilot’s father, bother spending money on expensive machinery when he could simply throw cheap labour at the tasks. Early on, I went to pour myself a glass of water from a tap, and the father said, “Don’t drink that water! It’s contaminated with bilharzia. You have to boil it first.”’ Bilharzia, or schistosomiasis, is a parasitic infection caused by a tiny flatworm that burrows through the skin into the body of those who come in contact with it. It can cause fever and chills, lethargy, and damage to the lymph nodes, spleen, and kidneys; it kills 200,000 annually. ‘I asked him, “Do you boil the blacks’ water?” and he looked at me as if I was mad. “What?” I asked him about the health of the blacks on his property and he shrugged, “Oh, they get lazier and lazier and they die early, around 35.” I said to him, “Hang on, wouldn’t that be because they’ve got bilharzia from the contaminated water?” and he waved me off, didn’t want to know.

  ‘We struck up friendships with the black and Asiatic waiters in our hotel. They couldn’t believe whites were being civil to them, and treating them as equals. It was heartbreaking to learn that some of these people were forbidden by the Pass Laws from visiting their parents in, say, Johannesburg or Durban, because they didn’t have a pass. They were even told what church to attend because the Calvinist Church segregated worshippers.

  ‘At the games at the big stadiums, black spectators were put in a pen the size of a small room and were subjected to terrible brutality by police with dogs. They’d be punished even more cruelly when they barracked for us.

  ‘Ant Abrahams, full credit to him, was the only one who was prepared for all this horror. He’d read deeply about apartheid in South Africa. It still appalled him, but at least he was forewarned. The rest of us, who hadn’t done as much homework, whose life in Australia was football, study, work, friends, freedom, could not believe our eyes. I saw whites hitting blacks for no reason and with no recriminations. It was madness.’

  On the tour, the Wallabies flew to cities, towns, and villages in an antiquated green Comair DC-3 (one of whose engines caught fire on the flight to the city of Welcome, forcing an emergency landing in a pot-holed field). They won more than their share of the 24 provincial matches they played on those hard, high-altitude veldt rugby fields, but lost all four tests, going down 30–11 in Johannesburg, 16–9 in Durban, 11–3 in Cape Town, and 19–8 in Bloemfontein, each time in front of capacity crowds of 70–80,000 that were wildly biased against them.

  The Springboks were bigger, more powerful, and more skilful, boasting such champions as Hannes Marais, Tom Bedford, Frik du Preez, Syd Nomis, Gawie Carelse, Piet Greyling, and Piet Visagie. Yet the Wallabies were not over-awed, at least not at first. ‘We were a young side, totally overconfident. We won nine of our first 11 matches, then we played the Springboks in the First Test and received the shock of our lives. They were so much better and bigger,’ Bruce Taafe would recall many years later. Not that the lighter Australian forwards — Roxburgh, Darveniza, Taafe, McDonald, Jake ‘Tractor’ Howard, and skipper Greg Davis — ever took a backward step. Paul Darven
iza, like his teammates, relished playing against the menacing South African forwards. ‘I didn’t mind fighting back against the rough stuff they put on. Unfortunately, because we were so much lighter, some of us were 80-something kilos to their 120, we were regularly pushed off the ball. Even our big boys like Roy Prosser were small in comparison to them.’ Says James Roxburgh, ‘We won our ball but continually were pushed back five metres.’ Although Jim Boyce says he found the Springboks to be hard but fair players, Roxburgh found that a punch in the scrum was the reward for opposition players who refused to buckle to the Boks. ‘I was whacked and concussed in the Third Test and can’t remember a thing about the match.’

  As had the 1963 Australian team, the ’69 Wallabies quickly developed a siege mentality on tour, born of the hostile Afrikaner fans and the patronising arrogance of the officials and politicians who, it seemed to the Australians, believed that every Springbok victory was an illustrious vindication of apartheid. Rugby, they were told repeatedly, was the sport of the National Party. After the Springboks won the Second Test, the president of the South African Rugby Board, Dr Danie Craven, reportedly likened the Wallabies to a schoolboy team. This guaranteed an uncompromising approach from the Australians that, while it didn’t win them any tests, made the Springboks earn their wins.

  Anthony Abrahams found that every aspect of South African life was polluted by apartheid, and this was certainly how it was with sport, ‘where we played against all-white teams in front of all-white or segregated crowds’. As had been the case in 1963, when blacks were allowed to attend matches, they were herded into cramped and uncomfortable segregated areas, enforced by barbed wire. ‘We saw police attack them with truncheons and set dogs upon them and fire tear gas at them, not because they were misbehaving but because they were non-white and supported the Wallabies.’