Barbed wire, flare throwers, anti-apartheid protests, armed police...the volatile setting for South Africa’s 1971 tour is still vivid for former Wallaby Geoff Shaw.
No sporting tour to Australian shores has caused such deep divides in the community or triggered such angry confrontations off the field.
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Look at the racially-diverse nature of the champion Springboks side that will run onto Suncorp Stadium against the Wallabies on Saturday night and you understand that it was a fight that had to be won.
Fifty years on, the bond between the Wallabies involved in the Brisbane Test of 1971 is still as strong or stronger.
A grand reunion set for July 31 was to have coincided with the date of the second Test played five decades ago at Brisbane’s Exhibition Ground.
When it sadly had to be cancelled because of COVID travel restrictions, it didn’t deter a less formal acknowledgement from that group.
Centre Shaw, 72, flyhalf Geoff Richardson, 72, lock Stuart Gregory, 75, reserve back David L’Estrange, 73, and coach Des Connor strode out to centre field to relive a little of what 1971 meant to them.
Connor is 86 and being involved meant a lot to the man who invented the short lineout in the late 1960s as a counter to the formidable All Blacks’ pack.
It’s a shame the likes of Arthur McGill, Steve Knight and Garrick Fay weren’t there to share the moment. Or Reg Smith, the young Northern Suburbs forward who made his Test debut at lock in the first Test and was, bizarrely, selected at prop for the second Test in Brisbane.
For Shaw, the very nature of Wallaby tours of his era created firm friendships that last to this day.
“You can’t travel around the world for four-and-half-months and not form strong relationships,” Shaw said.
“I still have a great friendships, almost brotherly relationships, with guys I played with or toured with 50 years ago."
Added Richardson: “We’ve all had a whole life after rugby of work, family and marriage so to get the chance to catch up is always very enjoyable.”
“I remember that tour because (Springbok flanker) Jan Ellis chased me all around Australia.”
Shaw was a kid from Kiama and the youngest Wallaby, at just 20, when the Australians toured South Africa in 1969. That exposure gave him his first understanding of the unique issues of South African sport and society.
He also roomed for much of that tour with lock Anthony Abrahams, who took his strong stand against apartheid as a human rights activist and by declaring his unavailability for selection for the 1971 series.
Shaw knew how bravely Abrahams was putting himself in the firing line even on the 1969 tour.
“Ant would go out at night to secret meetings in South Africa with anti-apartheid groups. There were already security forces bailing up black South Africans out after curfew in those days and there was the strong hint that if he went to another meeting he’d be locked up,” Shaw said.
The Wallabies of 1971 were no match for Hannes Marais and his formidable Springboks. The tourists won the three Tests 19-11, 14-6 and 18-6 but a truer measure was nine tries to two in the era of the three-point try.
“That tour split communities and families. I got a few letters dropped on the doorstep in Kiama saying ‘you’ll be shot’ if you play,” Shaw recalled.
“It split my own family. My older sister took the view I had a right to choose to play and my younger sister said it was wrong and I shouldn’t.
“My mum was really lovely. She was a high school teacher. Her logic was simple...I had the right to play just as others had the right to throw stones at me.”
Brisbane’s Exhibition Ground is probably most famous for being the scene of Don Bradman’s Test cricket debut in 1928 and the annual Ekka show which is as beloved by Queenslanders as the Royal Easter Show is to those in NSW.
The Brisbane Test would have been played at Ballymore but the open surrounds made it impossible to police. The Exhibition Ground, with its brick wall perimeter, was preferred.
“The first Test at the SCG was the eye-opener. I can remember standing in the middle of the ground looking around...there was the noise of the whistle-blowing and chanting, smoke flares and fireworks going off, hundreds of police and the protestors on The Hill,” Shaw said.
“Why did they let in the protestors? One country rugby official told me they were all paying a dollar and rugby needed the money.
“We’d got an idea of what was in store when we’d trained the day before. The police had trestle tables under covers.
“You thought they were going to have lunch. Instead, they took off the covers to do their own training by studying the smoke bombs, lengths of chain with nails, firecrackers and ballbearings they were expecting at the Test.”
In the days before the Brisbane Test, it did get intense. Then-Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen had almost put Queensland on war footing by declaring a State of Emergency to enhance police powers.
It got ugly when protestors massed outside the Tower Mill Hotel on Wickham Terrace, where the South African team was staying.
Advancing police jostled protestors backwards and down a slope. Bodies tumbled. Arrests were made amidst the bloodied and bruised.
Shaw remembers the 1971 ‘Boks as a fine team with players like Ellis, lock Frik du Preez and halfback Joggie Viljoen in the side.
“Frikkie was a great athlete. I remember him peeling off and running straight at me in Brisbane. He almost ran over the top of me. Whether he half fell over me or I tackled him, he came down. At the ruck, he put an arm across my head so I wouldn’t get shredded and just nodded, ‘good one’,” Shaw said.
The teams were given a police escort to the Exhibition Ground. Few realised the Test players were ferried to Ballymore post-match.
“We went back to Ballymore. It was quiet and we shared a few beers as rugby opponents do,” Shaw said.
Given the chaos that had gone before, the 1971 ‘Ekka’ Test was something of a relief. Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s widely criticised emergency orders turned the venue into a fortress and the match was played in almost eerie calm.
I joined the tour as the ’Boks arrived in Perth and stayed with them throughout, covering proceedings for the Sydney afternoon paper, The Sun.
There was trouble from the start. Anti-apartheid protesters at Perth airport were outnumbered by Rugby men turned vigilantes, who drew immediate battle lines. A brawl ensued; the vigilantes probably won on points.
In Adelaide, having been banned by trade unions from using normal accommodation we stayed in a street level motel with large plate glass windows facing the street. Demonstrators hurled things through the night. As did many others, I took the mattress off the bed and stacked it against the glass to protect myself.
In Melbourne demonstrators turned anarchists. They stuck ice picks in police horses, and threw fire-crackers laced with fishing sinkers into the faces of policemen. Mounted police responded by charging at pitch invaders, dropping the shoulders of their horses to send them sprawling.
In Sydney flares and smoke bombs rained down as pitch invaders staged a running battle with 800 policemen.
By Brisbane we had all had enough. I stayed with the team in the Tower Mill, and as the demonstrators gathered over the road the more playful Springboks wanted to join the throng, incognito, of course.
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I went with them and we stood at the top of the hill yelling “go home Springboks” to their mates at the windows.
Then the country police that Bjekle-Petersen had brought in for “security” charged up the hill. We retreated to the Tower Mill as the battle raged.
It was a case of bash first and ask questions later and many young University students copped a hiding, including a young Peter Beattie who was bashed and arrested, in no particular order.
Through it all the Springboks were patient to a tee. The rugby they played was magnificent. They had hard heads like their captain Hannes Marais and the veteran lock Frik du Preez, but they had a lot of young superstars too like the 21-year-old Morne du Plessis, for whom what would have been a marvellous international career was denied by the sporting isolation that followed.
Fifty years have passed since all of that, but the images never fade.
