"WHADDARYA?"
RUDOLF BOELEE
ALL BLACK RUGBY
Dedicated to the memory of my mentor,
the late Edward (Ted) Bullmore,
artist and rugby player.
ALL
BLACKS
"WHADDARYA?"
RUDOLF BOELEE
A PICTORIAL STORY ABOUT
ALL BLACK RUGBY
ISBN 978-0-20758-8
"Whaddarya?"
Art works, texts & design: Rudolf Boelee
*Publisher: Crown Lynn New Zealand Limited
P O Box 32092
Christchurch 8147
New Zealand
*In association with Germinal Press, PO Box 330, Sydney NSW 2042
Essay: Andrew Paul Wood
Poem: Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
© Rudolf Boelee, 2013
I started working on material for "Whaddarya?" during 2011. My wife Robyne
Voyce and I were displaced from our house in Christchurch, due to the February
22nd earthquake, and my only way to make any work at all was with a little old
Dell laptop. New Zealand was in the midst of Rugby World Cup media hysteria,
with the 'weight of history' hanging heavily over the team and their coaches. This
made me think of all these players who came before and how they would have
reacted to this situation (in the professional era). In first instance "Whaddarya?"
was a Facebook project, because we were continuously travelling and the only
way I could gauge if there was any interest in what I was trying to do,
was through regular posts from virtually every public library in the South Island. I
like to thank Andrew Paul Wood, Tony Carr, Eugene Huston, Johnny Lardner,
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, Jim Wilson, David Boyce for their very useful comments,
Tony Carr for giving me the script of Greg McGee's "Foreskin's Lament" and most
of all Michael Williams who gave me the idea for this project in the first place.
Rudolf Boelee
ALL BLACKS
RODCHENKO - STEPANOVA – DELAUNAY – FEININGER – GROSZ -
DELAUNAY
SPORT
MODERNISM
SOME BACKGROUND
The Roaring Twenties is a phrase used to
describe the 1920s, principally in North
America, but also in London, Berlin and Paris
for a period of sustained economic prosperity.
The phrase was meant to emphasize the
period's social, artistic, and cultural dynamism.
'Normalcy' returned to politics in the wake of
World War I, jazz music blossomed, the
flapper redefined modern womanhood, Art
Deco peaked, and finally the Wall Street Crash
of 1929 served to punctuate the end of that
era, as The Great Depression set in. The era
was further distinguished by several realities of
far-reaching importance, unprecedented
industrial growth, accelerated consumer
demand and aspirations, and significant
changes in lifestyle and culture.
SPORTS
The Roaring Twenties was the breakout
decade for sports across the modern world.
Citizens from all parts of the country flocked to
see the top athletes of the day compete in
arenas and stadiums. Their exploits were
loudly and highly praised in the new "gee whiz"
style of sports journalism that was emerging;
champions of this style of writing included the
legendary writers Grantland Rice and Damon
Runyon in the U.S. Sports literature presented
a new form of heroism departing from the
traditional models of masculinity. High school
and junior high schools were offered to play
sports that they hadn’t been able to play in the
past. Several sports, such as golf, that had
previously been unavailable to the middle-
class finally became available. Also, a notable
motor sports feat was accomplished in Roaring
Twenties as driver Henry Seagrave, driving his
car the Golden Arrow, reaches at the time in
1929 a record speed of 231.44 mph.
BERTOLT BRECHT
German poet, playwright, theatre director and
the Brecht Collective with their attitude of
'Neue Sachlichkeit' (or New Matter-of-
Factness), their stressing of the collectivity and
downplaying of the individual, and their new
cult of Anglo-Saxon imagery and sport.
Together the "collective" would go to fights, not
only absorbing their terminology and ethos
(which permeates Man Equals Man) but also
drawing those conclusions for the theatre as a
whole which Brecht set down in his theoretical
essay "Emphasis on Sport" and tried to realize
by means of the harsh lighting, the boxing-ring
stage and other anti-illusionistic devices that
henceforward appeared in his own
productions.
START
For a whole generation god was only twice as high as the posts. We who know
our history by itineraries – the cold war of the ‘50s you say? Oh yes, we remember
it well, those front-row problems, Skinner and Bekker. ’59? A mélange of O’Reilly’s
creamy thighs, Jackson’s jinks, DB’s size 13s, and a sheep-dog retrieving the ball
in a cow-paddock in Morrinsville. Froggies in ’61, Poms again in ’66 –bloody awful!
– those artistes of ’68, Villepreux and Jo Maso, a Pinetree bestriding the ‘60s with
a sheep under each arm, the Bokkies in ’73 – the ones that didn’t come, that
nevermore will come . . . there was one thing we knew with certainty: come
winter, we’d be there, on the terrace, answering the only call that mattered –
c’mon black! . . . While the nectar flowed till you could almost see the reflection of
your youth in its dregs . . passing . . . passing. I know the lore, I know the
catechism.
- Greg McGee, Foreskin’s Lament, 1981
START
The whistle blew, there was a glare of sunlight, and we were
outside going out onto the field, right out in the open. A roar
from the crowd rolled around us enveloping us. A cold
easterly breeze blew through our jerseys as we lined up for
the photographers, squinting into the low sun. The Southern
players looked broad and compact in their black and white
jerseys. We gave three cheers and trotted out in the middle.
The turf felt fine and springy. We spaced ourselves out. I took
some deep breaths to get charged out up with oxygen for the
first ten minutes. A Southern player dug a hole with his heel
and placed the ball.
'All right Southern? All right Varsity?' called the referee.
Both captains nodded. He blew the whistle. The Southern
man ran up to kick.
'Thank Christ,' I thought. 'The game at last.'
- A. P. Gaskell, “The Big Game”, 1947
THE BIG GAME
START ONE
TWO
THREE
and the claret
flowed
without
abatement…
What the tango is to Argentina, rugby is to New Zealand, with all of
its attendant national mythology, strict rules of masculinity, and
nostalgia for an amateur past when men were gladiators who
trained with the sheep in the paddock (although the backbone of
New Zealand rugby has always really been urban, not rural), and the
claret flowed without abatement. Our image of it is mostly
mythological, first as a myth of nationalism, second as a myth of
corporate marketing. It is a religion with all of the dogma,
catechisms, gospels, creeds, cultus and schismatic heresies of a
religion. Its language is martial…
Rugby football is a game I can't claim absolutely to understand in all
its niceties, if you know what I mean. I can follow the broad, general
principles, of course. I mean to say, I know that the main scheme is
to work the ball down the field somehow and deposit it over the line
at the other end and that, in order to squelch this programme, each
side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and
do things to its fellow man which, if done elsewhere, would result in
14 days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from
the Bench.
- P. G. Wodehouse Very Good, Jeeves (1930)
Rugby football was introduced to New Zealand from England by
Charles Monro in the late 1860s; first recorded game in New
Zealand took place in May 1870 in Nelson. Canterbury was the first
union, formed in 1879. In 1882, New Zealand's first internationals
were played when the New South Wales team toured the Dominion.
Two years later the first New Zealand team to go overseas toured
New South Wales; New Zealand played and won eight games. The
first tour by a British team took place in 1888 when a team toured
Australia and New Zealand.
Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen; soccer is a
gentleman's game played by beasts; football is a beastly
game played by beasts. - Henry Blaha
Only in New Zealand and Wales did rugby
evolve from a public school elite game to a
mass sport. It came to reflect an intensely
passive-aggressive, conformist, patriarchal
and colonial society influenced by the ideals
of Victorian upper and middle classes. Rugby
has been a means of promoting male
exclusivity, but also been a means of cultural
integration and patriotic nationalism. Rugby
emerged as a democratic space of social
mixing, mutual respect and common purpose
at the same time as the Industrial Revolution.
This tribal physical combat of controlled
violence translated into character, manhood,
mateship, and other assorted stoic frontier
martial virtues, complete with epic battles,
transcendent victories, crushing defeats,
heroes, villains, and operatic drama.
RUGBY IS A BEASTLY GAME
PLAYED BY GENTLEMEN
Rugby is a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far
from the centre of the city.
- Oscar Wilde
From the first 1905 tour until the anti-Apartheid riots sparked by the
Springbok tour of 1981, rugby promoted Empire and Commonwealth
solidarity, and projected an image of New Zealand manhood that was
virile, naturally dextrous and athletic, adaptable and sharp. From the
1970s, however, the loyalty within the amateur game began to crumble as
the players increasingly were unable to finance their rugby careers in the
face of high inflation and the increasing pettiness of the NZRFU over
finances (nothing new there). The professionalization of rugby in 1995
brought the belle époque to an end.
“Today's All
Blacks pale in
comparison to
the "tree” The Guardian, 4
November 2002
Each photograph
has that classic
look, those tell-
tale aesthetics
and semiotics
familiar from many
a Rugby Annual.
COACHES
It is slightly unexpected to see
All Blacks depicted in art this
colourfully – black, after all, is
nearly synonymous with New
Zealand art through the
auspices of Colin McCahon and
Ralph Hotere.
CAPTAINS
Sir Graham William Henry KNZM (born 8 June 1946 in Christchurch) is a
New Zealand Rugby Union coach, and former head coach of the country's
national team, the All Blacks. He played rugby union for Canterbury and
cricket for Otago in the Plunket Shield. Henry was heavily criticized
following the All Blacks quarterfinal exit at the 2007 Rugby World Cup and
was controversially reappointed. He was vindicated, however, when the
All Blacks won the 2011 Rugby World Cup final and is one of the most
successful coaches to have ever coached the All Blacks. On 1 November
2011, Henry announced he would be stepping down as All Blacks coach of
140 matches in a career that included a series victory over the touring
British and Irish Lions in 2005, five Tri Nations, three Grand Slams and one
Rugby World Cup title.
Rudolf Boelee’s
"Whaddarya?" (the
title taken from the Greg McGee’s
seminal 1981 play Foreskin’s
Lament) is a series of prints
celebrating that glorious age of
rugby when All Blacks played for
pride, glory, and camaraderie, and
counterpoints it with the modern
equivalents that don’t quite fit the
spokes model or biological tank
moulds. They were roughest of
gentlemen, or the most genteel of
ruffians. At Eden Park in 1956,
Peter Jones scored an
extraordinary try in the pivotal
fourth test against the
Springboks, the All Blacks’ first
series win over the Springboks.
When asked for comment, he
responded “Ladies and
gentlemen, I hope I never have to
play another game like that in my
life. I’m absolutely buggered”. The
New Zealand Herald refused to
print it and the recording spent
the next 30 years buried in the
radio archives.
black, after all, is
nearly synonymous
with New Zealand art
In a style ultimately deriving from
Andy Warhol’s stereographic
treatment of the mass image,
many a legendary moustache or
cauliflower ear is immortalised in
mud brown, dried blood puce,
grass green, half-time orange,
lager amber, nicotine yellow, and
a palette of other assorted
colours that would not be out of
place in any pub up until the
gentrification of the 1980s. The
effect is rather like Byzantine
saints against the gold ground of
icons. Each photograph has that
classic look, those tell-tale
aesthetics and semiotics familiar
from many a Rugby Annual. It is
slightly unexpected to see All
Blacks depicted in art this
colourfully – black, after all, is
nearly synonymous with New
Zealand art through the auspices
of Colin McCahon and Ralph
Hotere. How nice to see All
Blacks depicted in art which is
not a grotesque pseudo-
fascist/pseudo-Socialist Realist
Weta Studio-regurgitation, or the
Volkswagen-like buttocks of a
nude and callipygian Anton Oliver
as immortalised in oils by Simon
Richardson.
FORWARDS
FORWARDS
BACKS
BACKS
Haunted
For Ken Gray, the Ghost, All Black
Haunted
by these wild men
who tower up in black,
hunted
by the land's power
calling me back.
Buried
In the stone drive
of a dead mine,
banished
from a coal town
shut down.
Cut off
from syllables
of sea speech,
enough
to make a mountain smooth
on the quartz beach
Praying
karanga call
of Haere mai!
circling
the cruel earth
will make me cry.
Stood here
with tupuna
in a foreign grave,
stooping
at my father's father's
buried face.
Divided
by double blessing
clean in two,
divining
with a trembling fork
myself askew.
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
FORWARDS
FORWARDS
BACKS
BACKS
Colin Meads on assessing
'Tiny' Hill: "He was a ruthless
player and no doubt his
attitude rubbed off on me. He
was a player who hurt you
when he brushed against
you. But he was not a dirty
player. He was one the
greatest rakers of them all,
but I never knew him to kick
a man. He would tread over
men to get to the ball, but
that's rugby and I have never
seen a man badly hurt by
sprigs."
FORWARDS
FORWARDS
Richard 'Tiny' White
played for Poverty Bay. He debuted for the All
Blacks in 1949 by playing two tests against
Australia and he immediately became an important
player for them. He never missed a test match
during his career and was only subbed off once in
his career. White also played in thirty of the 36
games during the All Blacks 1953–54 New Zealand
rugby union tour of Britain, Ireland, France and
North America, this number was the most of any
player. White was regarded as being excellent in
the lineout. He was also very quick and had
"incredible stamina." Terry McLean once remarked
that he was "a wonderful player" who "played with
matchless vigour, especially in the lineout." White
was forced to retire from rugby at age thirty-two
after he received a kick in the back. This along
with his farming injuries and an almost paralyzed
left hand was too much for him to continue playing.
His final game was during the 1956 tour by South
Africa. The All Blacks won the series 3-1 which
was their first ever victory against South Africa in
a test series.
There is, indeed,
something timeless
and classical about
the images in
Whaddarya – not the
idealized “pretty
boys” of the
Classical canon
The Greek poet Pindar is perhaps
most famous for his odes
celebrating the athletes of his
day. A frequent leitmotif in his
poetry is the notion that fame
survives not in deeds, but in what
is written about them. The same
can be achieved in the visual arts,
though Leni Riefenstahl would
have found little appealing here.
There is, indeed, something
timeless and classical about the
images in Whaddarya – not the
idealised “pretty boys” of the
Classical canon (also a feature
foisted on the professional game
by the marketing machine – Dan
Carter and Sonny Bill Williams
come to mind), but the thickened
cartilage and broken noses of the
statues of Olympic boxers and
pancratists roughly contemporary
with Pindar with their sagging
paunches, cauliflower ears and
tree trunk legs that took the
massive body punches and keep
on taking them is a much more
brutal age – the mainstays of
Hellenistic verism. They wear
with pride their battle scars of
one bout too many, and prepare
for yet another. They wonder if
they will win, or whether this will
be the last their martyred bodies
can take. We wonder also.
but the
thickened
cartilage and
broken noses
of the statues
of Olympic
boxers
1987 New Zealand won the final against France at Eden Park in
Auckland 29–9. The New Zealand team was captained by David Kirk,
substituting for the injured Andy Dalton, and included such rugby greats as
Sean Fitzpatrick, John Kirwan, Grant Fox and Michael Jones. The
tournament was seen as a major success and proved that the event was
here to stay and also led to many countries joining the International Rugby
Football Board which in turn led the IRFB to become the true authority for
the running of international rugby union.
I had 17 or 18 stitches. Fred Allen
reckoned my backside twitched
every time the needle went in... that
night we all went to the after-match
dinner. I had a towel around my neck
because the wound was weeping, so
that made me look a sight. Benoit
Dauga came over. I'd cut my hand on
his teeth and broken his nose. My
hand had turned septic. Hygiene in
those days was... well, it didn't really
exist. Dauga was stammering, trying
to find the words to ask me a
question. He wanted to know why I'd
belted him. I was astonished and
pointed to my head. The dirty so-and-
so...
- Colin Meads, cited Donald McRae, “Today's All Blacks pale in comparison
to the 'tree”, The Guardian, 4 November 2002
For 56 days in July, August and September 1981,
New Zealanders were divided against each other in
the largest civil disturbance seen since the 1951
waterfront dispute. More than 150,000 people took
part in over 200 demonstrations in 28 centres, and
1500 were charged with offences stemming from
these protests. To some observers it might seem
inconceivable that the cause of this unrest was the
visit to New Zealand of the South African rugby
team (the Springboks). Although not a major sport
on a global scale, rugby has established itself not
only as New Zealand’s number one sport but as a
vital component in this country’s national identity.
In many ways the playing of rugby took a back seat
in 1981, and the sport suffered in the following
years as players and supporters came to terms
with the fallout from the tour.
Some commentators have described this event as
the moment when New Zealand lost its innocence
as a country and as being a watershed in our view
of ourselves as a country and people.
The rest of the world
realised there was
rugby gold in the
Pacific.
Auckland really will be the world's biggest Pacific Island city today when Eden
Park welcomes 60,000 to see Samoa play Fiji. For the Samoans, the hype and
interest this game has generated will be confirmation they have been world
rugby's most compelling story for the past two decades. It is almost 20 years to
the day since Western Samoa as they were known in 1991 pulled off the
unthinkable and beat Wales at the old Cardiff Arms Park. It was a day clocks
stopped in the Principality and a day the rest of the world realised there was
rugby gold in the Pacific.
Keith Murdoch, a prop,
played for Otago from 1964 to
1972, except for one season
each for Hawke's Bay (1965)
and Auckland (1966). He
represented New Zealand from
1970–1972, playing in 27
matches for the All Blacks,
including three test matches.
He toured with the All Blacks
to South Africa in 1970 and to
Great Britain and Ireland in
1972, but was troubled by
injury throughout both series.
Murdoch's career ended
controversially and
mysteriously. He scored the All
Blacks' only try in their 1972
win against Wales in Cardiff,
but later the same night was
involved in a fracas in which he
punched security guard Peter
Grant, knocking him to the
ground, as he attempted to
enter into the famous rugby
watering hole, The Angel Hotel
which was closed at the time.
He was later sent home from
the tour by All Black
management, reputedly after
pressure was brought to bear
by the home rugby unions.
Kevin Lawrence Skinner
(born Thursday, 24 November
1927), a prop, who played in 20
international tests for New
Zealand, 2 of them as captain.
He was also a heavy weight
boxer, winning the New
Zealand championship in 1947.
Skinner was selected for the
1949 All Black tour of South
Africa. He continued playing
for the All Blacks and was
captain in the 1952 series
against South Africa. Skinner
also went on the tour to Great
Brittan and played in 27 games
including all five tests. He was
one of the key players. Skinner
retired at the end of the 1954
season but he played again for
the All Blacks for the final two
tests against South Africa in
1956. Both those tests were
won by New Zealand. "Six foot
tall (1.83m) and weighing 15st
4lb (97kg) Kevin Skinner, a
skilled lineout No.2, expert
rush stopper, strong
scrummager and extremely
mobile, remains one of the very
best props New Zealand has
produced."
Skinner remains one of the very best
props New Zealand has produced.
At Eden Park in 1956, Peter Jones scored an extraordinary try in the
pivotal fourth test against the Springboks, the All Blacks’ first series
win over the Springboks. When asked for comment, he responded
“Ladies and gentlemen, I hope I never have to play another game
like that in my life. I’m absolutely buggered”. The New Zealand
Herald refused to print it and the recording spent the next 30 years
buried in the radio archives.
Jonah Tali Lomu, is a New Zealand rugby union player. He had sixty-three caps as an All
Black after debuting in 1994. He is generally regarded as the first true global superstar of
rugby union. He has had a huge impact on the game. He was inducted into the
International Rugby Hall of Fame on 9 October 2007,[2] and the IRB Hall of Fame on 24
October 2011. Lomu burst onto the international rugby scene during the 1994 Hong Kong
Sevens tournament and was widely acknowledged to be the top player at the 1995 World
Cup in South Africa even though New Zealand lost the championship game to the host
Springboks. At one time Lomu was considered 'rugby union's biggest draw card, swelling
attendances at any match where he appeared. He is officially the Rugby World Cup all-time
top try scorer with 15 tries.
Bryan Williams, MBE (born 3 October 1950 in Auckland, New Zealand) is a former New
Zealand rugby union footballer and coach of the Samoan national rugby team. His father
was Samoan, and his mother a Rarotongan of Samoan descent and Williams went to school
in Mt Albert Grammar School, where he started his rugby career. He became an All Black in
1970 as a wing and distinguished himself in the 1970 South African Rugby Tour where he
was a sensation, scoring 14 tries in his 13 appearances and in the international series he
scored in each of the first and fourth Tests. This was during apartheid, so with his
parentage he was only able to tour after honorary white status was granted. Williams
international rugby career lasted from 1970 to 1978 in which he played 113 matches
(including 38 international Tests) and scored 66 tries in all matches as an All Black (ten
tries in Tests) which was a record until beaten by John Kirwan. After he retired from rugby,
he coached a number of club sides in New Zealand. During the 1990s onwards, he has been
the national rugby coach for Samoa.
CLARET
VIOLENCE ON THE FIELD
Tension was high in the second Bledisloe Cup test of
1992, with the Wallabies having sneaked the first test 16-
15 in Sydney. And then it all got too much for All Black
prop and Herald on Sunday columnist Richard Loe.
Australian wing Paul Carozza slid in for his first of two
tries that day and before he even had time to think about
cracking a smile he was wondering how come his nose
was spread across his face. The answer was that it had
been hit by the forearm of Loe, who had dropped on
Carozza just after the wing had scored. The incident left
Loe the most reviled man in Australia and Carozza famous
not for being a half-useful Wallaby, but for being king-hit.
1992 was a year of penitence for Mr. Loe. Shortly
after smacking Carozza, he was back in front of the
judiciary, this time for eye-gouging All Black team-mate
Greg Cooper. It's hard to imagine what Cooper, possibly
the world's nicest human, could have done to deserve
such treatment. Loe was banned for six months but as we
at the Herald on Sunday have discovered, Loe is probably
the second-nicest human on the planet. He just needed to
get that anger out of his system.
Boelee, born in the Netherlands in
1940, is uniquely placed as an
outside observer to highlight
some of the more völkisch
obsessions of New Zealand-ness.
His father was a socialist and an
atheist, and had been a member
of the utopian idealists known as
the AJC (Arbeiders Jeugd
Centrale or “Young Workers
Organisation”) and his childhood
began with the German’s bombing
of Rotterdam and continued under
the Nazi occupation. Boelee is
thus attuned to the effects of
capitalism and social ideology on
communities. He also played
rugby himself, mainly as a prop,
starting while working at the
Whakatane Board Mills, Eastern
Bay of Plenty, in 1969 in tough so
called 'shift games'. He was then
in his late twenties with no
technique to speak of, playing
against veterans. From there he
was asked to join Poroporo
Football Club, associated with
one of the local marae. “I was one
of the few pakehas there and I
suppose being Dutch did not make
me like 'them'. I kept playing
there on and off for a few
seasons, until I left the district,
played a bit in Tokoroa, trained
with a French club in the South of
France and a team in Holland. By
1976 it was enough already…”
He also played rugby himself, starting while working at the
Whakatane Board Mills, Eastern Bay of Plenty, in 1969, in tough so
called 'shift games'.
The football match at Carisbrook was
over. Dusk was already falling, and
during the last part of the game the
flight of the ball and even the
movements of the players had been
hard to follow in the failing light. Now,
looking across the field, I could see
the crowd dimly massing around the
gates. Here and there a small yellow
flame flickered where a smoker was
lighting up, and the whole crows
moved under a thin blue haze of
tobacco-smoke. After all the cheering
the place seemed very quiet, and from
the street outside came the noise of
cars starting up and whining off in low
gear, and a tram screeching round the
corner under the railway bridge.
Overhead the sky was clear with a
promise of frost. A few small boys ran
with shrill cries under the goalposts;
the rest of the field lay empty in the
grey light, and the smell of mud came
through the damp air. I shivered and
glanced down at my steaming jersey.
- A. P. Gaskell, “The Big Game”, 1947
END
ALL
BLACKS
Rudolf Boelee’s "Whaddarya?" (The title taken from the Greg McGee’s
seminal 1981 play Foreskin’s Lament) is a series of prints celebrating
that glorious age of rugby when All Blacks played for pride, glory,
and camaraderie, and counterpoints it with the modern equivalents that
don’t quite fit the spokes model or biological tank moulds. In a style
ultimately deriving from Andy Warhol’s stereographic treatment of the
mass image, many a legendary moustache or cauliflower ear is
immortalized in mud brown, dried blood puce, grass green, half-time
orange, lager amber, nicotine yellow, and a palette of other assorted
colours that would not be out of place in any pub up until the
gentrification of the 1980s. The effect is rather like Byzantine
saints against the gold ground of icons. Each photograph has that
classic look, those tell-tale aesthetics and semiotics familiar from
many a Rugby Annual.
Andrew Paul Wood
ISBN 978-0-473-20758-8
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