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Rugby Behind Barbed Wire: The 1969/70 Springboks Tour of Britain and Ireland
£16.70£19.00 (-12%)
‘We spent all our time surrounded by police cordons and barbed wire, never mind having our bus hijacked.’ – Tommy Bedford, Springboks No. 8 2019 and 2020 mark the fiftieth anniversary of the controversial 1969/70 Springbok rugby tour of the British Isles – a landmark event on both a sporting and political level. Taking place during the time of South Africa’s apartheid dispensation, the tour was characterised throughout by violent demonstrations against the ‘ambassadors of apartheid’. Scenes of chanting demonstrators at the players’ hotels and airports were not uncommon, nor was the sight of protesters being dragged off the field of play by police. Smoke bombs and flour bombs also became a match-day fixture. These were wild and unnerving times for the players on tour, whose movements were badly inhibited and who had to play hide-and-seek to avoid possible violence between games of rugby. During a demanding tour that lasted more than three months and took them to and fro between England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, they endeavoured to sustain a proud tradition of highly successful Springbok tours through the Isles. Through personal interviews with the players, including team captain Dawie de Villiers, vice-captain Tommy Bedford and other senior members of the squad, as well as key figures such as anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain, Rugby Behind Barbed Wire takes readers into the inner circle of a besieged group of sportsmen who just wanted to play rugby despite concerted efforts to deny them. The author also looks at the political context of events, and why so many felt that disrupting the tour was a matter of moral and political necessity.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Amberley Publishing (15 Nov. 2020) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Hardcover | 288 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1445694107 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1445694108 |
| Dimensions | 15.6 x 2.79 x 23.39 cm |
by michael bran
It was a gift for someone else
by Rugby Historian
Expected more historical details, especially as Mr Schoeman holds two Masters Degrees in history. Chris Laidlaw’s foreword presented the author the opportunity to dig deeper, and offer a greater insight, into the Springboks 1969/70 tour. The questioning of much of the tour’s history, the Why, How, What, When, Where, and Who, appears to be dependent on ‘…the product of reminiscences by players and management’ from over fifty years ago! Hopefully, the author’s historical book on ‘Churchill’, will be more revealing, and productive.
by A voice in the dark
This should have been a brilliant book that looked back over a pivotal moment in British rugby history, UK society and the start of a mass anti apartheid movement in the UK. Whilst the description of the actual games and some of the reflections of the Springbok players gives an interesting take on what was a controversial rugby tour, it failed to really reflet on what sparked such a strong reaction towards the Springboks, what they represented at the time and also the deep issues with racism within the UK in the1960’s. One passage in the book highlights this issue when the author describes the 1960 Sharpeville massacre as ‘so-called’. This is a shocking statement to make as this is a well documented crime and was one of the many crimes against humanity that the1996 truth and reconciliation commission reviewed. Nor was there any real attempt to explain what apartheid meant, how it affected South African society and what harm it did to all communities. I wanted this book to be better, instead it relied on the fake idea of ‘rugby folk’ who just want to play rugby who know nothing of politics and outsiders who know nothing of the sport and just want to demonstrate. If the author had taken the time to talk to the demonstrators and give their reasons for why they had taken part this would have been a much better book. BT Sport Films covered this tour in much greater detail and is more informative than this book and its look at what happened after the tour and how the apartheid regime smear the main leaders of the stop the tour. As a rugby fan I am always interested in the games history, especially the Springboks, but this book was a disappointment and I am left feeling the author was trying to make excuses for those who played against and toured South Africa during the apartheid era.