The Sports Factor

According to the purists when brain and brawn combine seamlessly rugby can be more than just sport, almost zen like. You've got to be kidding!

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Mick O'Regan: Hello everyone, and welcome to The Sports Factor here on ABC Radio National. I'm Mick O'Regan.

On this our last Sports Factor before the summer season, we'll be exploring the hidden past of one game and the, well, over-exposed aspects of some others.

MUSIC

Greg Appel: This story looks at the links between sport and sex.

Man: Sexiest sport for me. I watched the Olympic Volleyball Final between Brazil and Cuba.

Greg Appel: And the least sexy?

Man: That's a tough one, I guess you could say that would be the Eskimo Ice Fishing Championships.

GIGGLES

Woman: Yes, sex is a very important part of bowls.

We come to bowls to get away from it, we just need a break.

Skite!

GIGGLES

Mick O'Regan: Sex and sport, and we'll look at those tantalising connections a little later in the program.

Firs up though, the football code that's going back to the future.

For Australia's rugby team, the Wallabies, next year is crunch time. The sixth Rugby World Cup will be held in France, and for Australia, the prospects are not all that encouraging.

The combination of a weak scrum, a less-than-impressive home-and-away record, and concerns about key positional players has left local Rugby fans hoping for the best, but fearing the worst.

Attention to what's wrong with our scrum has been exercising minds all around the country, and it was through that collective skull scratching that I became aware of a small, almost forgotten book on Rugby by a largely unheralded writer.

At some time in the mid to late '70s an undated, self-published manuscript did the rounds of a few enthusiasts.

Called 'Crouch and Hold' it was a root and branch critique of the Australian game. Based on an entirely new critical framework, 'Crouch and Hold' aimed to see Rugby in therapeutic terms, a synthesis of mind and muscle that engaged some, but not all, of the leading players of the time, including two former Wallaby captains, Andrew Slack and Mark Ella.

Mark Ella: I guess most of the way we played the game was very, very instinctive, so yes, he was probably a person very much like myself, so no wonder I guess we get on so well.

Andrew Slack: It was a bit like an opposing heavy, you know, had the big blazer and the badges on. As a player, you got used to if you see him coming your way, you'd scoot off, or you'd suddenly need to go to the loo, and I know Cameron was an enthusiast, and I respect him for that, but he was a bore, let's face it.

Mick O'Regan: Former Wallaby Captains Andrew Slack, and before him, Mark Ella, talking about the author of the book, 'Crouch and Hold', Robbie Cameron.

Cameron, whose own playing career seems to have peaked with Warringah in the Sydney club competition, set out to re-shape some of the fundamentals of the Australian game.

Largely unknown here, across the Tasman his ideas and his attitude had wider currency. To supporters of the All Blacks, Cameron was both a keen student and a ferocious opponent.

Someone who knew him better than most is Keith Quinn, one of the leading New Zealand sports broadcasters and for many All Black fans, the voice of Rugby.

Keith spoke to me from his office in Wellington.

Keith Quinn, first of all, welcome to The Sports Factor program on ABC Radio National.

Keith Quinn: Thank you very much indeed Mick, nice to be here.

Mick O'Regan: Now Keith, let's just quickly talk about your role in broadcasting and commentating on Rugby in New Zealand; you must be one of the most experienced callers of Test match football?

Keith Quinn: Yes, I guess so. I suppose I have to speak modestly, but I first called a Rugby - I can remember going as a young reporter late in the '60s to report games, and then I did my first TV coverage of a Test match in 1973, and I called All Blacks tours and World Cups right through till really this year; just a matter of days ago I was in Dubai doing the International Rugby Board seven-a-side tour, so it's been a whole career of broadcasting, and I suppose it's hundreds and hundreds of Test matches.

Mick O'Regan: Indeed. In Australia people talk about Norman May being the voice of particular sports, but I imagine for literally generations of New Zealanders, yours is the voice that describes Test match Rugby.

Keith Quinn: I'm pleased you mentioned Norman May, because I worked with Nugget a number of times. I've been in his company at Rugby Test matches and at the Commonwealth Games and the Olympic Games and sat alongside him at the swimming commentary, too, where of course he's world famous. I love that guy. And so, yep, well if you compare me to Norman May, that's fine by me.

Mick O'Regan: Indeed. Now Keith, talking of Norman May and talking of Rugby of course that brings us back to what I've brought you on to the program for today. Because we're looking at an old monograph called 'Crouch and Hold', written by this guy called Robbie Cameron, who I believe you met quite early on in his career.

Keith Quinn: Well it's funny that this story about Robbie Cameron has come around several times in my life. I was a young bloke living in an apartment, in a flat, in Wellington when our club hosted a team of Colts I think it was from Warringah, and they came to town, and we were assigned to look after this bloke called Robbie Cameron, and straightaway when he moved into our apartment for three or four days while the team was playing a game in Wellington against our club, we knew straight away this guy was somewhat unique.

He introduced us to a whole range of drinking possibilities we'd never heard of before, and songs and late night revelry, and chat-up lines for our local women, and sleep deprivation and all that sort of stuff. But also I found that he was a guy that knew all the scores and all the moves from the games that have gone by, and the best kickers, and the best tries. He seemed to be a bit of a know-all about everything, and he was certainly a real character that stuck in my mind. When we played the game against them it all went out the window because we thrashed the Warringah Colts, I think we thrashed them by 17 to 16.

Mick O'Regan: One of those thrashings. He was a winger, from memory; did he play wing in that game that you saw?

Keith Quinn: My memory's a bit hazy on this, but I know that he combed his hair backwards, so that would suggest that he was a winger, wouldn't it?

Mick O'Regan: Well largely, yes.

Keith Quinn: The other great memory I have of him after the game in Wellington, we had a few drinks at the clubhouse, and then we came back to our flat where of course he was living with us, and we had some local people, we had a bit of a party, and at one stage he shusshed the crowd down and he made a bit speech about the deep meaning of Rugby, and how seriously we should all take it. And I remember, I mean this is years and years, decades ago, and I remember at one stage he said there were five great Australians, and he wanted to list them: Barry McKenzie, Dawn Fraser, Dougie Walters, Stan Pilecki, and Geoff Sale.

So he listed those guys. Now we didn't know a lot about some of them, but I understood that Stan Pilecki and Geoff Sale in particular, but he said that he wanted to help take violence off the streets, which was noble, but he said he wanted to help put it back on the Rugby field where it belongs, and he also had this strong thing in his speech, the point he wanted to make as the crowd told him to clear off, 'we want to get on with the drinking', but he said one day he wanted to play for the Wallabies. That was his main drive in life was to play for the Wallabies.

Mick O'Regan: Well of course that didn't happen, but some of those now 35-year-old observations, particularly about the Australian scrum, I mean you mentioned Stan Pilecki there, the big Queenslander who played prop for Australia. Now Cameron's ideas in 'Crouch and Hold' about the warrior seizing the moment, he often criticised the Australian scrum. What do you make of those early criticisms now 35 years later?

Keith Quinn: Well of course in those days the Wallaby scrum was great. As it came into the '60s it was more than a match for the All Blacks, and we had to swallow hard at that, because what had been protected by Robbie Cameron back in our lounge all those years before, was coming through, but of course these things are cyclic, Mick, and these days I look at the Aussie front row and sometimes I think they're all combing their hair backwards, because they're not the force that they were. What's happened to Australian manhood, and more importantly, what's happened to Australian scrum technique?

Mick O'Regan: Well of course these are some of the key issues that we'll take up with other footballers later in this program. But Keith Quinn, it's been a pleasure having you on The Sports Factor. Many thanks for your time.

Keith Quinn: Thanks indeed, Mick.

Mick O'Regan: Veteran Kiwi Rugby commentator, Keith Quinn on the line from Wellington.

Robbie Cameron's early views were soon to change dramatically. In the early '70s he left Australia for Europe, and it was there his thoughts on Rugby developed along unpredictable lines.

Violence was out. In 'Crouch and Hold' Cameron wrote:

Reader: 'Uncontrolled violence based on anger simply distorts the emotions and reduces the capacity for productive play. It demeans both the player and the game. Aggression must be focused and accord with the rules, as an expression of respect and determination to prevail.'

Mick O'Regan: Colin Peacock is a senior research fellow at the Foundation for Sports Psychology, based in Napier, in New Zealand.

Colin Peacock: Well Europe in the mid-'70s was alive with new ideas about Rugby. On the one hand you had the great Welsh teams of the day, with players like J.P.R.Williams and Gareth Edwards, who were pushing here with the running game, while the French were relying on the continual interaction between the forwards and the backs.

But Cameron had been exposed to the outer fringe of European Rugby, especially, and Scandinavia, and there he became fascinated by the prospect of a game where the natural energy of the individual could feed into the psyche of the team. And then came his epiphany, he stumbled on to Wilhelm Reich's notion of the orgone and the power of that energy to heal. And there you have the basis of 'Crouch and Hold', the revolutionary notion of Rugby as therapy.

Mick O'Regan: So that idea of Rugby as therapy, how was that received?

Colin Peacock: Well to be honest, pretty badly at first, but the one exception to that perhaps was here in New Zealand where the notion of the interdependence of the individual and the team is often expressed. In fact, if you think of the 2005 British Lions tour, the image chosen here to represent that tour was of the All Blacks was of Tana Umaga At the beginning of the Haka, stand in black, the player fused with the team, and with the nation. It's classic Cameron, but very Kiwi.

Mick O'Regan: So just on that, while he was in Europe, did Robbie Cameron stay close to expat Kiwi players?

Colin Peacock: Oh definitely, and that's why he would have been in just the right place at the right time to get a jersey in that trial match for the Barbarians during the '84 Wallaby tour.

Gerry Collins Commentary: Scrum about to set. The New Zealand front row already into the crouch. This is crucial for the Australian selection. No, referee not happy, scrum to repack. Now they're set. Ball in quickly by Ahern, the Australian scrum is holding, now it's out. Ahern to McMahon, he dummies, back to Cameron, coming on the angle from the left wing - Oh, he's crunched in a head-on tackle by Murray Burns, the Kiwi flanker, what a tackle, but still he's managed somehow to get the pass away. Pick and drive By the Australians, the ball's laid back by Luke McMahon. Now there's a chance on the left if they move it, Ahern to Saunders, quick hands to Bassett, and here's Cameron, Cameron for the line! He's in! It's a try! A try to Robbie Cameron! After some great lead-up work by the forwards, and the Australian XV has hit the front with under 2 minutes to play.

Mick O'Regan: Cameron's goal in making the Baa-Baa's trial was not so much to play the game as to meet the players to explain his ideas. And those ideas were myriad. They ranged from how to catch a bad pass by keeping your hands 'soft', to individual mantras that players could use to capture the moment.

One of those he managed to collar was Mark Ella, the brilliant five-eighth who managed a personal Grand Slam by scoring a try in each of the tour Test matches.

After a game at Lansdowne Road in Dublin, Ella agreed to speak to the sporting media, and Robbie Cameron managed to get into the discussion.

Mark Ella: Basically it was just an opportunity to meet with the local I guess media, because Australian Rugby was played a little bit differently I guess to European Rugby, and they just wanted to ask a few questions, and I do remember knocking into Robbie and basically yes, gave him a little bit of advice about when he was playing about 'soft hands' and yes, very wise he was.

Mick O'Regan: Well indeed. And just on that 'soft hands', what I read in 'Crouch and Hold' is that he had a theory that you should flex your hands quickly as the ball's coming to you, in order to keep them soft as the ball arrived. Can I ask you, as someone famous for being able to catch a bad pass, was that new to you? Was it relevant?

Mark Ella: Well it was certainly different at the time, and probably yes, probably well before its time because I did actually use that on a couple of occasions, and I found it did work particularly when I had somebody like Nick Farr-Jones playing his first Test Match against England. I just told him to throw the ball and he said Well you're standing a little bit too close. And I said, Don't worry about that, my hands are OK, I've got this exercise that I do prior to each game, so yes, obviously it does work.

Mick O'Regan: Now you would have come across I imagine lots of people, particularly at that time, who were peddling different theories. Alan Jones was the coach of that '84 tour; he was someone who constantly was at players. Did it surprise you to come across someone who had this Zen idea, if you like, about Rugby?

Mark Ella: Yes, it was totally surprising, like I said before, it was just - I really always fancied my own ability and really didn't listen to two many pieces of advice that I got throughout my career, but actually this one actually made sense, so yes, it was totally different.

Mick O'Regan: And the idea that Rugby should be intuitive rather than a discipline that you trained for, he was a notoriously poor trainer, did that ring any bells with you?

Mark Ella: I could probably relate to that. I guess throughout my career with my brothers, we hardly trained at all and I guess most of the way we played the game was very, very instinctive. So yes, he was probably a person very much like myself. So no wonder I guess, we get on so well.

Mick O'Regan: Well just a final thing. Even though he was a winger and was celebrated for always demanding that players anticipate his centre kick, he also was fascinated by forward play, and obviously 'Crouch and Hold' relates to forward play. The critique he made of the Australian scrum some 35 years ago, would you say that it still holds?

Mark Ella: Well again, I try to keep away from forwards as much as I can. I don't know exactly what they're doing half the time anyway Mick, but if Robbie says that's what you've got to do, I believe him.

Mick O'Regan: Well there you go. Mark Ella, thank you very much for spending this time on The Sports Factor here on ABC Radio National.

Mark Ella: Yes, thanks Mick.

Mick O'Regan: Not all the Wallabies were convinced however. For the 1984 tour captain, Queenslander Andrew Slack, the ideas promoted by Cameron had to be seen in context - there'd been a lot of people pushing solutions to the game's problems in the past. And while Slack hadn't actually read 'Crouch and Hold', he was aware that it was around.

Andrew Slack: In any sport you find these people who it becomes more than just a sport to them, it becomes almost their secondary life, and they put so much into it, and I think that was probably to do with 'Crouch and Hold'.

Mick O'Regan: Now did you ever see him play?

Andrew Slack: He was around. He was one of those sort of floating figures that pop up in various games and the Baa-Baa's game celebrates the end of a tour in '84, although he hadn't been an actual member through the tour, somehow or other, and I forget the details, he ended up being there, it might have been injuries, but he came on and like again, a lot of those blokes, they get on in the last few minutes when everyone's tired and someone's injured, and bang, he came and did a couple of things. So yes, the memory's clear that he had a role to play that day.

Mick O'Regan: But just on meeting Robbie Cameron, were you ever buttonholed by him and got the full box and dice on 'Crouch and Hold'?

Andrew Slack: Look I think there were very few buttonholes un-Cameroned by the end of it, I mean he was just one of those guys if he got a minute, he'd grab you. But it was a bit like an opposing heavy, you know, had the big blazer and the badges on. As a player you got used to if you see him coming your way, you'd scoot off, or you'd suddenly need to go to the loo. And I know Cameron was an enthusiast and I respect him for that, but he was a bore, let's face it.

Mick O'Regan: So when you met Robbie Cameron, what happened?

Andrew Slack: Well straight away he wanted to talk Rugby, there was no small talk, he was straight into things about footy and he explained some of his ideas and the need to understand how Rugby worked as a therapy, and I think he was wearing a T-shirt at the time which emblazoned across it was 'You need therapy'. Anyway he was knowledgeable about the game, and certainly elements of it that I wasn't. And he told me lots about how to work with Mark Ella to create space, and the channels around the ruck and all this terminology that most people hadn't thought of until recent years. But he certainly had a million ideas and most of those were about the scrum.

Mick O'Regan: Yes, he's always been critical of the Australian scrum, even 30 years ago.

Andrew Slack: Yes, I think most people after that '84 tour talked about the try-scoring, Ella try in each thing, but from Cameron's point of view, there was only one decent moment worth putting on a video, and that was a pushover try against Wales at Cardiff. I guess he'd felt that scrummaging all that time prior had been tripe, and he probably thought it's tripe since, but that was the pinnacle that never has been reached before or since.

But apparently on one camera angle, you actually see him for a moment when that try was scored, holding a cardboard sign that simply had 'Therapy' written on it, and Tommy Lawton was laughing about some guy right down on the sideline, who kept screaming at him in the forwards how to set a scrum, and all this stuff about them being warriors, and holding the moment. And I guess that points to only one man, it'd have to be Robbie, I'd have thought.

Mick O'Regan: Certainly sounds like him. Look, just to finish up, I mean and this is hard because there's obviously various people who come and go within sports and sports psychology in Australia, but do you think that he's influential within Australian Rugby?

Andrew Slack: You know, eccentricity has its place and influence, and I think certainly he'd be considered in that little group. I guess the jury's still out, in some circles he's a crank, and you know, you might want to be on that bus, but others, they think he's a bit of a guru, and someone who saw the whole scrum problems years before anyone else, it would suggest that he had something to give. So I suppose like a lot of people with challenging ideas, he was championed by some and ignored by others. But that few minutes or so at the end of that Baa-Baa's game, he had some potential as a player, no doubt.

Mick O'Regan: Andrew Slack, former Captain of the Australian Wallabies.

As for Robbie Cameron, he played out his career with the Coorabell Rugby Club, and my thanks to Jonathan Finch and the other officials at Coorabell for their help with this story.

Guests

Andrew Slack
Former Wallaby player.

Mark Ella
Former Wallaby player.

Keith Quinn
New Zealand rugby commentator.

Colin Peacock
Foundation for Sports Psychology in New Zealand.

Presenter

Mick O'Regan

Producer

Andrew Davies