Notes

vii, 451 pages : illustrations (some colour) Summary: Rugby is New Zealand's national sport. From the grand tour by the 1888 Natives to the latest World Cup, from games in the North African desert in the Second World War to matches behind barbed wire during the 1981 Springbok tour, from Carisbrook to Eden Park, the story of rugby is New Zealand's story. It is a story of how the game travelled from England and settled in the colony, how Māori and later Pacific players made rugby their own, how battles over amateurism and apartheid threatened the sport, how national teams, provinces and local clubs shaped it. But above all it is a story of wing forwards and fullbacks, of Don Clarke and Jonah Lomu, of the Log of Wood and Charlie Saxton's ABC, of supporters in the grandstand and crackling radios at 2 a.m.Rooted in extensive research and highly illustrated with many rare photographs, this book is the defining history of rugby in a land that has made the game its own. (Book flap)