Pitched Battle

by Larry Writer

  Following the Sydney Town Hall reception, the Springboks had a light training run at Sydney Cricket Ground No. 2, to iron out the kinks of the flight from Melbourne and to sharpen their technique and tactics for tomorrow’s match. Afterwards, they returned to the Squire Inn, where, once more, they were forced to bury their heads under pillows to muffle the noise from the crowd outside. The protesters’ resolve in the wintry conditions was fortified by coffee served by ministers from nearby Waverley Methodist Church. The players would have welcomed some succour as well.

  Beating Sydney soundly, the Springboks knew, would serve as an emphatic statement to the Wallabies — who were no doubt hoping that the tumult would affect the visitors’ form — that they had much to fear. So the visitors chose their top team, including the intimidating forwards Marais, Bedford, Frik du Preez, Jan Ellis, and 198-centimetre line-out jumper John Williams; and speedy, skilful backs Piet Visagie, Hannes Viljoen, and Ian McCallum. Nor was the Sydney team sub-standard, with Wallaby contenders fullback Arthur McGill, winger John Cole, centre Stephen Knight, and forwards Peter Sullivan, Greg Davis, Garrick Fay, Reg Smith, Roy Prosser, and Peter Johnson in the side.

  The crowd, which would number 17,625, a bumper turnout for a Tuesday, began arriving at the famous ground 90 minutes before kick-off. Standing vigil at the entry gates as the rugby supporters filed in were CARIS protesters, including Jim Boyce, James Roxburgh, Paul Darveniza, and Barry McDonald, politely and painstakingly explaining their stance on apartheid to fans and handing out the Australia–South Africa: an appeal from some Wallabies leaflet. Most of the rugby supporters filing into the ground responded positively to the courteous, well-dressed footballers, although a few were hostile. Recalls Roxburgh, ‘Occasionally someone passing would give me a contemptuous look or even tell me I was a prick, but nothing too bad.’ One rugby man swore at McDonald and called him a traitor. He laughed it off.

  Jim Boyce saw many former teammates on their way into the match. There was no animosity from them. ‘I didn’t fall out with a single teammate. Not one,’ he says today. ‘I was scrupulous in not involving them, or the public, rancorously. I debated them respectfully. I believed I had facts that others may not be aware of about how sport in South Africa was manipulated to serve the principles of the minority white government and justify the apartheid system. I tried to show rugby people how that was taking place, using my personal experience and learning …’

  Sekai Holland did not fare as well as the four men. Holland, in her richly coloured robes and a spectacular headscarf, moved among the queues, handing out the leaflets. In those conservative times, she was an idiot magnet. ‘Most people were courteous whether they took a leaflet or declined, but three or four were very rude,’ she remembers today. ‘They tore up my leaflets and threw them in my face and said, “Go home, communist Sambo!” Rugby fans and Nazis — the Skull was terrifying … is he still alive? — ripped up my signs and spat at me, but I wasn’t intimidated. When you are involved in a cause, you are so hyped up, you ignore your fear of being hurt. The same people who abused me in 1971 were voting for Gough Whitlam in 1972, so I think we succeeded in changing some minds.’

  Holland says the rugby players who stood up against apartheid will always hold a special place in her heart. ‘My beautiful white boys … I don’t even care what they’re doing now or that they’re not boys anymore, they were lovely. I took the term “beautiful white boys” from Hair … three black women singing that white boys are so groovy, white boys are so tough … Finally, I had met beautiful white boys who were doing something with us. For us! My heroes for life. What they did contributed so much.’

  The parents of Boyce and Roxburgh stood by their sons at their vigils. Said Roxburgh, ‘My parents, both doctors, were conservative people and not actively political. I didn’t encourage them to come, but they did, and they held placards, which I found enormously moving.’ McDonald’s brother supported him, even when his sister-in-law refused to attend matches because she disagreed with his stance. ‘That division in my own family extended right through the community over the issue,’ he said.

  At school, CARIS convenor John Myrtle had known George Souris, the future leader of the National Party in New South Wales and, at various times, minister for sport, tourism, and the arts. Souris was a good rugby player. ‘I was standing outside the Cricket Ground with my leaflets, and there was George, heading in my direction. He saw me and changed course. I was disappointed. I wasn’t interfering with his rugby, just inviting him to take a brochure about apartheid. So I called out, “Hey, George, take a leaflet … a little light reading!” He kept going, without taking a leaflet. Many years later, George was honest enough to admit that the stand of the protesting footballers had been an honourable one and that he had been wrong.’

  While the well-attired and respectable CARIS folk employed reason and courtesy, and succeeded in converting many to their way of thinking, the AAM crew arrived at the SCG with courtesy a low priority. They would make a statement their way. Led by Burgmann and McGregor, 1,000 men and women protesters — many with de rigueur long straggly hair, beards (the males at least), and tattered jeans and jumpers — shouted their chants and exchanged jibes with fans — typically middle-aged men in the rugby uniform of pressed slacks, business shirt, rugby-club tie, and hounds-tooth blazer sporting elbow patches.

  In the lead-up to the match, McGregor broadcast that the AAM intended to disrupt the match, but hoped there’d be no repeat of the Melbourne violence. He claimed he had warned his followers not to smuggle tacks, nails, glass, fireworks, or other weapons into the ground. If he did, a number weren’t listening.

  That cold, clear-sky day, 300 police ringed the perimeter fence of the SCG. Barbed wire had been strung around it to deter climbers and hurdlers. Blue-overall-clad police wearing protective gloves prowled the sidelines, ready to defuse the phosphorous and arsenic marine flares. Warnings to demonstrators that they would be arrested if they invaded the field boomed from the public-address system. To deprive the demonstrators of opportunities to disrupt the match, there would be no preliminary games, no national anthems, no dignitaries shaking hands with the players as they lined up on the field before the kick-off. The captains’ coin toss would take place in the dressing room.

  As match-time neared, the demonstrators paid their dollar entry charge at the turnstiles and entered the ground. Once inside, as per AAM strategy, they made for the Hill on the eastern side of the SCG. There, now numbering around 2,500, they commenced to blow whistles and hooters, sing out slogans and protest anthems, and throw fireworks, flares, and other objects onto the field. When the players ran on and the game got underway, the field was swathed in an acrid orange mist that constricted throats and made eyes stream.

  A few rogue demonstrators threw balloons filled with tacks and sharp metal discs that were capable of slicing open the arm or leg of any player who fell on them. Police were pelted with golf balls. Demonstrators and rugby fans alike suffered cut heads when struck by flying beer cans. A police constable was hit in the face by a full can of beer. His gashed nose and forehead required six stitches. The thrower, William Lenane of Paddington, was pummelled by other officers. One protester huddled under a United Nations flag as pro-tour supporters’ tinnies rained upon her.

  Although they were not sanctioned by rugby authorities as in Adelaide and Melbourne, rugby vigilantes, many of them drunk, attacked demonstrators. One noticed Bishop Crowther’s imposing figure in the crowd and hurled a bottle of beer at his head; it missed, but the bishop was showered with beer when it shattered on the wall beside him. Crowther’s supporters hustled him out of harm’s way. As he was departing the ground, some congratulated him, while others booed and threw more beer. Peter Hain left, too, although not voluntarily. He was sitting in the Members’ Stand (on a ticket that Jim Boyce had slipped to him through the fence) when a green-coated attendant recognised him and ejected him.

  ‘Have a bath
!’ yelled the fans at the demonstrators. ‘Fascist pigs!’ returned the protesters. When paddy wagons were driven onto the ground, spectators cried, ‘Fill ’er up!’ Police made 58 arrests, a significant number, but far fewer than in Melbourne. Generally, the Sydney police seemed less heavy-handed than their Melbourne counterparts. Officers at the SCG this day mostly waited for incidents to happen before they took action and then used only necessary force when making arrests. Inevitably, some police exceeded their brief, punching and headlocking arrested protesters who would have been happy to go quietly. Police also confiscated the cameras of an ABC-TV crew.

  The 80-strong police cordon ringed the field, and the officers didn’t flinch when fireworks exploded around their heads and at their feet. One constable’s cap flew off when a cracker exploded on his shoulder. He casually reached down, retrieved the cap, and placed it back on his head. Some police glared daggers, others smiled grimly — as if to say, ‘Is that the best you’ve got?’ — at those who threw the bungers. A sinus-burning pall of grey and orange smoke hovered above the field and drifted into the spectator areas. The screech coming from the massed protesters — a shrill cacophony of whistles and horns, booing and yelling and screaming, and exploding tom-thumbs and bungers — sounded like a swarm of berserk cicadas.

  The most spectacular arrest that day, one that made the front page of every newspaper in Australia and a number overseas and has gone down in protest folklore, was that of Meredith Burgmann. Her field invasion should have come as no surprise to police because she had made her plans plain in a Bulletin interview just days before when she confirmed that she would run onto the field, and that she would not be alone. She wasn’t in the least worried about being arrested, she said. Indeed, being on the field would be safer than in the grandstands because the rugby vigilantes and police wouldn’t be able to beat her up, as, out in the open, the media would be watching. ‘I think that all our problems will be solved once we’re over the fence.’

  While it was ‘bloody scary’ at the time, today Burgmann recalls her arrest with satisfaction and not a little amusement. ‘I went to the match disguised as a middle-aged South African rugby fan,’ she says. ‘I wore a red wig and a horrible white cable-knit coat because I knew the police would stop anyone who looked like a demonstrator. So no one would suspect us, my sister Verity and I spoke to each other in what we hoped approximated an Afrikaner accent. Verity and I and our friends Ralph Pearce and Janice Jones used the tickets of AAM colleague Dick Persson, who would become head of the Queensland Department of Health, to get into the Members’ Stand, opposite the Hill, where most of our mob were. From the kick-off, protesters had been trying to run onto the field without success.’

  The Burgmann sisters, Pearce, and Jones bided their time until ten minutes into the second half. Then, says Meredith, ‘We respectfully asked the police in front of us if they minded moving a little to the side because they were blocking our view of the match. They obliged, and as soon as the coppers’ backs were turned, we used our Esky to climb over the picket fence, and ran on. We hadn’t thought we stood any hope of getting onto the field, but it was so easy. The police were taken by surprise. We’d been acting like nice little Afrikaners, talking loudly in that distinctive twang. We ran like mad and made it to the middle of the field … The police chased us, but they really were flat-footed and we outran them. Once among the players, we didn’t have a clue what to do next. We hadn’t thought it through. It had never occurred to us that we’d ever get that far. So, as the game continued around us, I sat down on the grass, which seemed the obvious thing to do. Verity, however, was more adventurous. She grabbed the rugby ball and kicked it as hard as she could. The Bulletin called it the best kick of the match. Our invasion actually brought the game to a halt. I’m glad of that …

  ‘And then the police got us. They were nasty, angry that we’d slipped through their cordon. They dragged me roughly hundreds of metres around the perimeter fence. They wouldn’t let me stand up. My metal watchband cut into my wrist and drew blood. All the rugger buggers ran down to the fence and screamed abuse and spat on me as I was being hauled past. I saw pure hatred in their faces. Coming between these blokes and their sport was the most dangerous thing I ever did.

  ‘The crowd figure was 17,500 [sic], but I reckon everyone in Sydney must have been at the SCG that day because, even now, people say to me, “Oh, I was there when you ran onto the Cricket Ground.” When I die, as a respectable little old lady, that fact will be in every obituary. I’m proud of what my sister and I did. My parents were wonderful. They were not happy to see me being manhandled by the police and spat on, but they were proud of what I did, too.’

  Burgmann and her fellow field invaders were escorted to a room beneath a grandstand that the police had made their command headquarters. They were soon joined by a fellow who’d also breached the police cordon and run onto the field. Dave Chadwick played rugby league for Sydney University. Wearing his football gear, police had at first assumed he was a player. Only five succeeded in getting onto the playing area that afternoon.

  Some Springbok players had a grudging admiration for their persecutors. ‘Some of those people who got over the fences knowing they were going to get a fearful hiding must have guts,’ said one. ‘I know I would think twice before trying it.’

  As for the rugby, the Springboks remained unbeaten by winning 21–12. This time, however, victory came at a heavy cost. Tom Bedford had his cheekbone broken, and winger Gert Muller’s nose was smashed. Neither would play again on tour. Otherwise, it was a low-key encounter whose drabness was blamed on referee Kevin Crowe, described by one pundit as ‘a finicky little Queenslander who got his lines mixed up’. Crowe, who later wrote that he feared being kidnapped by Peter Hain when they found themselves sharing the same dining room at their hotel, seemed determined to impose himself on the game at the cost of free-flowing football. Halting the play repeatedly to blow penalties, his stoppages ensured that neither team hit its stride. Unusually, the visitors scored no tries, just six penalty goals and a field goal. As they left the SCG, some spectators joked that if it wasn’t for the demonstrators, there would have been no action at all. Fans hoped the Saturday match against New South Wales would provide more attractive fare.

  At the ground that day, as a guest of the Sydney Rugby Union, was Australian Cricket Board chairman Sir Donald Bradman, who was no doubt thinking ahead to the South African cricket team’s tour. He was unnerved by the pandemonium.

  Next day, The Sydney Morning Herald seemed to be having second thoughts about its support for the Springbok visit, editorialising that the tour was becoming all too hard. The piece pointed to the three-metre-high barbed-wire fences separating spectators and players, the 600 police diverted from their normal duties to try to keep peace at the game, and the paddy wagons lined up inside and outside the SCG. ‘In the light of these riot-control precautions the most simplistic supporter of this embarrassing tour can hardly still pretend that all that is involved is a simple sporting event. Sport which has to be conducted behind barbed wire is, in this country, an ugly absurdity — and we can do without it.’

  Yesterday’s demonstration, observed the Herald, was, ‘so far as violence was concerned, a tame affair compared to the disgraceful scenes at the weekend match at Melbourne. For this we can be thankful. The police measures seem to have been well-organised and were executed with good sense and discipline. Those responsible deserve credit. Among the demonstrators the larrikin minority who have brought discredit on the movement were not without vicious weapons and instruments of disruption, but their viciousness was fairly well contained. Many of the demonstrators made their point lawfully and with dignity. They too deserve credit.’

  Yet, the broadsheet continued, the reduced violence should not be judged by a comparison with the brutalities committed by both sides in Melbourne or at any other outbreak of civil disorder. Rather, the comparison should be with any normal international s
porting occasion. By that standard, the Springbok–Sydney match saw ‘an exhibition of exceptional and distasteful rowdiness … Behind this rowdiness run the passions of a nation divided about the tour by a number of issues, some spurious, some not, yet all of them producing disruptive results utterly disproportionate to the essential frivolity of the so-called sporting events concerned. Many Australians rightly deny that the Springboks’ presence here amounts to an Australian endorsement of apartheid. Many quite properly resent the bullying tactics used by opponents of the tour. But is a mere sporting tour worth such divisive effects? Is a sport worth playing at all when it can be played only under the indignity and absurdity of police protection? Of course it is not. The sooner this dreary tour is over, the better. And the sooner our cricket authorities have second thoughts on the summer tour from South Africa, the better. We have problems enough without this unnecessary controversy.’

  The pro-Labor Australian worried that the violence would play into the hands of the Liberal Government, which was going to fight the 1972 federal election on a law-and-order platform. However, thundered editor Adrian Deamer, the tour had caused such tension in the community that the Government would be grossly deficient in leadership if it did not immediately stop the tour, which should never have taken place, before there was more bloodshed.

  On Thursday 8 July, in the dead of night, Bob Pringle, president of the New South Wales branch of the Building and Construction Workers Union, and John Phillips, an ironworker, put into action the plan they had aired at Darghan Street. They stole into the SCG and onto the playing field, and tried to hacksaw down the aluminium goalposts to be used in Saturday’s Springboks–New South Wales game. The pair were seized by attendants, but not before they’d sliced a three-centimetre-deep, 20-centimetre-long groove through the uprights. Found on Pringle were pamphlets urging unionists to demonstrate at the coming match. At their trial at Sydney’s Central Court of Petty Sessions, the police prosecutor told magistrate Murray Farquhar that if the sabotage had not been detected, the posts could have crashed down if they were buffeted in wind or bumped by a player, causing ‘serious injury or even death to sportsmen playing on the field’. The cost of repairing the posts by welding was $750, and this sum was added to the defendants’ fine. Pringle and Phillips were released on bail. The former was ordered not to attend Springbok matches, but refused to comply.