Wenger to remain at Arsenal two more years
Angus Black, aged 92, tells Richard Bath how the 1950 New Zealand tour was shaped by interminable boat trips, All Black thuggery and acute homesickness
Arsene Wenger has verbally agreed a new two-year contract to remain Arsenal manager until at least 2019, extending his extraordinary tenure at the club into a 23rd year. The deal has been offered by majority owner Stan Kroenke and, while subject to formal ratification at a board meeting, Wenger’s continuation as manager is now regarded as a formality. An official announcement is expected to be made by the club today.
‘We could have won the first Test, but I think in retrospect the All Blacks had been told to be gentle. That attitude didn’t last’
There are moments in every player’s career that cause sleepless nights, yet few get to linger on them for as long as Gus Black. Now a very chipper 92, the oldest surviving Lion is still haunted by a moment in the first Test against New Zealand in 1950 when he spurned an opportunity to topple the All Blacks in their fortress stadium at Dunedin. The game ended 8-8; the Lions ended up losing the four-test series 3-0.
“I shall go to my grave – which is now sooner rather than later – knowing I shall never forgive myself for not beating them,” Black says. “I broke from the scrum and there was space, but outside me, unbeknownst to me, was Ken Jones, with nothing in front of him. We were just outside the 25, so it was a certain score, and I neither saw him nor heard him.”
That, Black believes, was the Lions’ big chance. New Zealand captain Ron Elvidge scored a late try to scrape a draw and, after that, the All Blacks turned on the after-burners. Although the results look close – the Lions lost the remaining Tests 8-0, 6-3 and 11-8 – Black says they were comprehensively beaten.
Not that his memories are all sour: far from it. Sitting in an armchair in his care home in Fife – his accommodation is purely a matter of convenience, as his upright frame and razor-sharp mind would shame men 30 years younger – you can sense his excitement when he recalls the moment, as a 25-year-old medical student from Edinburgh, “just 10½ stone in a dripping wet shirt”, he discovered he had been selected for the tour.
“I got a letter in the post, which didn’t come as a great surprise, because I thought I’d be a natural choice,” he says. “You had to be able to put up a hundred quid [£3,200 in today’s money]. That was quite a lot in those days, especially for chaps like Cliff Davies, who was a miner in south Wales. He didn’t have any place near a hundred quid, but the village clubbed together.
“We were paid £2.50 a week for hospitality, to buy a round if needed, but it was difficult to spend a penny, because you know the New Zealanders made it difficult to put your hand in your pocket. It was 1950 and it was the first sort of major contact after the war, so they were kindness itself.”
Black had played against many of his fellow Lions, but knew few of them well. In that sense, the three-week passage from Liverpool to Wellington via the Panama Canal – quite a contrast to the 27-hour flight Warren Gatland’s touring party undertook on Monday – was valuable.
The shy Jackie Kyle was the star player, and the diffident Karl Mullen their titular leader, but Black’s sharpest memory is of another tourist.
“As a bunch of blokes, you couldn’t have asked for better,” he laughs, “but in terms of characters you’d have to put Cliff Davies at the top of the list. He played front row for Wales and had a naturally pleasant singing voice. He sang rather more than even most Welshmen, and had a taste for opera. He was forever bursting into song, particularly at receptions. Quite frankly, to the average onlooker, it was a pain in the a--but it made everyone feel very jolly and bonded us with visitor and host alike.”
Incredibly, there was no coach, and the selection process “was a sort of democratic outing” where the team manager, Surgeoncaptain Ginger Osborne, and his assistant, Ted Savage, plus Mullen and a group of senior players such as Bleddyn Williams and Jack Matthews, would hammer out a consensus.
Feted wherever they went, debuting their red shirts and white shorts (they previously played in blue shirts) and calling themselves the Lions for the first time, the tourists won all three games in the opening week. Black was outstanding in the 24-9 win over Buller but, in the lead-up to the first Test, heavy defeats against Otago in Dunedin – where he ran the line dressed in his kilt – and Southland, where Black was targeted by the opposition, gave a hint of what lay in store.
“We could have won the first Test, but I think in retrospect the All Blacks had been told to be gentle,” Black remembers. “It would have looked bad for them if they’d been too rough, but that attitude didn’t last. In the second Test in Christchurch, I spent more time up in the air than on the ground. They really went to town on me.”
It is easy to see why Black was targeted. He was selected for the first Test because he possessed the fastest and longest pass of the three Lions scrum-halves. His task was to release a talented back division containing legendary Irish
outside-half Jackie Kyle, the great Welsh centres Jack Matthews and Bleddyn Williams, and a back three of hard-running Cardiff full-back Billy Cleaver, Welsh sprinter Ken Jones and Black’s Edinburgh University half-back partner, Ranald Macdonald, who played on the wing.
Crucially, the All Blacks knew what Black could do. After the war, many of them were stationed in Germany and, after they began to wreck their host town, were sent on tour to the UK “to quieten them down”.
When the all-conquering Kiwis, who included legendary All Blacks Fred Allen and Bert Cooke in their number, were beaten 11-6 in Edinburgh in January 1946, 20-year-old Black was their tormentor-in-chief.
“Most of that team were All Blacks, and they came to Murrayfield for the finest game of rugby I’ve ever played in,” said Black. “It was absolutely brilliant. They’d never had a try scored against them, but we scored two and beat them solidly, by running, passing, intelligent kicking and just generally playing like a bunch of good lads. It was thrilling – I’ll never forget it. So, when we went to New Zealand, they knew what I could do, which didn’t make things any easier for me.”
Nor did it help that Black toured without his two teak-tough Scottish back-row minders, roughhouse policeman John Orr and Borders farmer Doug Elliot, who could not take up the offer of a Lions place because of lambing. Of the 31 Lions in 1950, only five were Scots, with Black and Macdonald being joined by Doug Smith (who broke his arm and played only one game), prop Grahame Budge and Anglo-scot Peter Kininmonth. Wales, who won the Grand Slam in 1950, had 13, including six of 11 outside-backs; Ireland had nine, including captain Mullen, and England four.
“We didn’t win the tour because we didn’t have a pack of forwards as strong and as capable as the All Blacks,” Black says. “We didn’t have the intensity. Their forwards were very hard and more physical than ours, but if we’d had bigger, stronger forwards we might have given them a run for their money.
“In some respects, they seemed just more sophisticated rugby players. Throughout the tour, it was disappointing that we didn’t do better, but we weren’t up to it. The intense way that the New Zealanders go about rearing and fostering their rugby players means they produce skilful players, and we didn’t.”
Almost 70 years on, Black remains a ferociously harsh judge, but then he was always obsessed with skill levels. In Edinburgh, he practised daily with club stand-off Ranald Macdonald – both would be blindfolded and the little scrum-half would throw pass after pass into the onrushing Macdonald’s breadbasket. Norman Mair, the great sage of Scottish rugby journalists, played with Black and said that he could throw the ball with such velocity that Edinburgh University took a cast of his wrists to work out how. Incredibly – in an age when the prospect of playing 10 matches in just over a month is enough to prompt howls of protest over player welfare – the Lions were only just over midway through their travels after losing the fourth Test. Having played 23 matches in New Zealand, the tourists still had seven games to play in Australia – including two Tests – and did not leave the country until the end of September.
Although the Lions would win all bar one of those remaining provincial games – a 17-12 defeat inflicted by New South Wales – Black became slightly peripheral. He played against Poverty Bay, Taranaki, North Auckland, the Maoris, Sydney Metropolitan and in the loss against New South Wales, but his state of mind was problematic.
When the Scot departed in April, he left his new wife, Meg, and 18-month-old son, Angus, at home. Long before they arrived back in October, he had had enough.
“Six months is a long time,” he says. “By the time we left, I never wanted to go to another cocktail party. Homesickness was a real problem and became quite intrusive after a while. I was a newly married man and, in retrospect, it was a bit of a wrench. It contributed to my homesickness.
“If I’d been picking a Lions team, I wouldn’t have picked myself, because for the last six or eight weeks I sometimes didn’t go to training sessions. Ginger Osborne was very good about it. I suppose you’d say I got a bit depressed.”
After Black returned from what he called “a real adventure” he was never to play international rugby again. His stellar displays for Leicester and Bristol while on National Service saw him captain the Possibles in the Scottish Trial, but his habit of speaking his mind – “I was slightly arrogant, I suppose” – was not to the taste of the high heid yins at Murrayfield, and he was never to add to his six Scotland caps. But the memories of 1950, and his starring role in one of sport’s great endeavours, can never be taken away.