Former All Black worried for M¯aori rugby
Former All Black enforcer Billy Bush has issued a plea for NZ Rugby to not allow Covid-19 to push Ma¯ ori rugby to the fringes.
The pandemic has forced NZ Rugby to slash its budgets and axe staff, and the future of several programmes remain in doubt in the short term.
While a domestic Super Rugby tournament is set to be launched next month, followed by the Mitre 10 Cup and tests between the All Blacks and Wallabies, the Ma¯ ori, women and under-20 teams are unlikely to be so fortunate.
Bush, who made 37 appearances (12 tests) for the All Blacks between 1974 and 1979 and also represented the NZ Ma¯ ori, is urging the NZ Ma¯ ori Rugby Board to keep ‘‘rattling the cage’’ to ensure NZ Rugby doesn’t allow Ma¯ ori rugby to be swept aside.
‘‘I am concerned about where the Ma¯ ori team is situated at the moment. We have been going since 1889 and we are way down the pecking order,’’ Bush, 71, said. ‘‘A lot of Ma¯ ori care about it. A lot of us do.’’
NZ Rugby is staring at a loss of around $100 million for 2020, due to the pandemic interrupting the Super Rugby and international calendars.
Bush, a life member of Te Waipounamu Ma¯ ori rugby, has urged Dr Farah Palmer, the chair of the NZ Ma¯ ori board, to keep promoting the indigenous side of the game and was encouraged by the recent addition of former All Black Arran Pene.
‘‘Guys like him [Pene] are important,’’ Bush confirms. ‘‘Arran played a lot of Ma¯ ori rugby and he really enjoyed it.
‘‘A lot of young Ma¯ ori today, they play for the likes of Canterbury Ma¯ ori and they get a taste of it.
‘‘They love that culture and that’s why they come back. Otherwise there is no incentive to play.’’
In 2019, 43,000 Maori registered to play rugby. Bush played more than 100 games for Canterbury and was recently made a life member of the CRFU.
Born in Hawke’s Bay and raised in Bay of Plenty before shifting to Northland, and later Canterbury, he was encouraged to join the Suburbs club (he later switched to Belfast), Bush enjoyed some high times with the All Blacks.
He played two tests against the Springboks in South Africa in 1976 and earned three caps against the
UBill Bush
‘‘My best memories are those with the NZ Ma¯ori team because there is a totally different culture compared to the All Blacks.’’
touring British and Irish Lions the following year.
But he cherishes his time with the Ma¯ ori the most.
‘‘My best memories are those with the NZ Ma¯ ori team because there is a totally different culture compared to the All Blacks,’’ Bush reflected.
‘‘The All Blacks culture was pretty dour. You were there to do a job and you had to be focused. Whereas with the NZ Ma¯ ori team, it was more the culture and the wairua and the spiritual mana that they had when you were in the side.
‘‘You could feel it. It was awesome, awesome.’’
nlike 1970 there was no requirement to register Ma¯ ori players as ‘‘honorary whites’’ when the All Blacks toured apartheid South Africa in 1976.
Bush wanted to go to South Africa to prove a non-white could help stuff the Springboks in front of their own fans. He had no regrets, even though the Springboks won the series 3-1.
He also had his share of fun, venturing out with members of the coloured community – which didn’t go down well with the white faces in authority.
‘‘I got to know a lot of the coloured people and they would take me out to areas where we were not allowed to go out to; the black and coloured areas, but I was told ‘the South Africans don’t like what you are doing, you are poking your nose into their business’. We came here to play rugby . . . so that was knocked on the head’.’’
All Blacks coach JJ Stewart, a schoolteacher from Taranaki, encouraged Bush to get the team to do the haka before games.
‘‘And I knew the South Africans did not want the haka to be performed on their land,’’ Bush says. ‘‘And only a few of the boys really knew how to do it.’’
Bush asked the late Stewart what would happen if the South African Rugby Union complained: ‘‘He [Stewart] said ‘well, we will go home’. And I knew there was no way they would let us do that, because they filled the grounds that’s for sure.
‘‘We did it. But it was bloody awful,’’ Bush cackled.
Stewart suggested Bush invite some coloured female friends to attend a function in Port Elizabeth on one occasion.
Bush was worried about the ramifications from the white officials, but he sneaked them in by telling the doorman they were supporters from Rotorua.
‘‘The security guy said ‘who are they, what are they doing here?’ I told him they were from New Zealand,’’ Bush said.
‘‘He asked to see their passports but I said ‘I don’t have mine and you are letting me go in
. . . So the four of them came in.’’