SPECTATOR SPORT
An awesome victory
Frank Keating
THE ALL BLACKS of New Zealand were awesome at Murrayfleld on Saturday in posting a unique half-century of points in the 120 years that Scotland have been play- ing' rugby union. Unless they play out of their skins, England in turn should be clob- bered by the tourists this weekend at Twickenham.
The Scots picked a bespoke team of lum- bering six-and-a-half-footers in an attempt to arm-wrestle some sort of parity. It was crazy and they were floored as resoundingly as some of those 20-stoners like Buster Mathis who used to square up with a bully's brief hope against Muhammad Ali.
Rugby will soon become a side-show if everyone begins to think like that. Good games must rely on athleticism and timing and co-ordination beating sheer bulk and size. It is why basketball (which still man- ages to get Yanks worked up for some rea- son) has become a game for freaks: ditto, I suppose, tug-of-war and Sumo wrestling.
The All Blacks' collective displayed utter resplendence on Saturday, and the three tremendous tries by the 20-year-old debu- tant who has already played a spectacular one-day cricket international for New Zealand, Jeff Wilson, put a headlining gee- whizz on the afternoon. Murrayfield as usual had been conned into high hopes. It was stunned into silence at first, then tried a few lines of that fearful dirge Flower of Scotland in a forlorn effort to rally the clans. By the end they gave chivalrous best. But heaven knows how many suicides there might have been around Princes Street had it been the England team.which had inflict- ed such a beating.
Scotland's affinity with New Zealand must have something to do with mirror- image from exact opposite ends of the earth — all those sheep-speckled hills and white-capped mountains, not to mention rain and a resentful colonisation. Rugby too — for it was a young Scot, Charles Monro, son of Sir David Monro, the Speak- er in New Zealand's first House of Repre- sentatives, who first introduced to his mates in the town of Nelson, in 1870, the 'hacking and handling' game he had learned at school in Britain. Within weeks, Nelson had challenged their North Island neighbours at Wanganui to a game — and the Kiwi's 'oval religion' was founded.
So all Scotland will be devoutly on its knees for a conclusive and concussive Eng- land defeat at Twickenham this weekend. That will make them feel better — and will be a most satisfactory way to begin their store of hatred against England, which will be full by the time the English team arrive to play at Murrayfield in February.
As Arnold Kemp observes in his crack- lingly readable fuse-wire of a new book The Hollow Drum: Scotland Since the War, which I read before setting out for the match on Saturday: `Scotland's national passion is now paraded at Murrayfield where the crowd sings Flower of Scotland and reviles the English. It is mercantile Scotland at play. Here is wealth, here is comfort, here is entrenched Unionism. Why, then, do they sing with such passion and is there anything more peculiar than the sight of some per- jink Edinburgh insurance broker, Unionist to his fingertips, unleashing a volley of abuse at the English team and all its works . . . ? Murrayfield nationalism is a kind of vapour rising from the Union, a venting of resentments and jealousies.'
Och, sure, twas nearly a pleasure to be beaten by the wonderful All Blacks, Jock, but pray to God they humiliate the English by more.
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