The try that revived New Zealand back play

What the first great Test-winning streak by the All Blacks highlighted was the way in which New Zealand's backs were unencumbered from the dreadful 10-man rugby that had dominated the days from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s.

Games could go from line-out to line-out with halfbacks or first five-eighths kicking the hard-won ball directly back to touch a few more yards down the sideline. It was like the creeping artillery barrages of the First World War.

Occasionally there were break-outs when teams over-powered their opposition and a reminder was provided that backs did have skills worth promoting.

Coach Fred Allen led the revival of back play for the All Blacks. Their tour to Britain and France and 1967 was the proving point that it was possible to play a 15-man game. It wasn't an instant revolution but the seeds were sown. It also helped the Allen's manager on the tour was Charlie Saxton, who had penned a coaching manual of significance in the late-1950s which was also aimed at expanding the style of play. It was the ABC of Rugby.

There was another factor in the development and it was the demonstration that players had the skills, they only needed to be encouraged to use them. First five-eighths Earle Kirton demonstrated that in the 1967 Test against England, while during that tour Bill Davis showed their was still a case for the classic type of centre to make outside breaks while also setting up his outsides.

It was Davis who told journalist Wallace Reyburn, "It is marvellous to go on the field now and know that you are no longer one of the forgotten men in the three-quarters but instead they are working up there in front to get the ball back to you, for you to run with it."

Fullback Fergie McCormick was efficient coming into the backline, especially on the blindside, and forwards were also encouraged to run with the ball in hand.

But if there was one outrageous breaker of the mould it had to be Grahame Thorne. He burst onto the scene having been selected to play in the first All Blacks trial for the 1967 tour, after he had been selected to play for New Zealand Under-23 against Taranaki.

The dazzling centre was told by coach Fred Allen to have a go on his own at half-time so when the chance came he did and he scored a startling solo try. A more orthodox second was scored later and suddenly Thorne found himself in the final main trial to be played a few days later at Athletic Park in Wellington.

Again he scored a key try, the result of a scissors movement. Sadly, coverage of the two trials does not appear to have survived in video.

But being selected for the All Blacks tour to Britain and France helped ensure that graphic evidence of Thorne's ability has been retained. 

It was against West Wales, where the All Blacks were being given a bit of a tickle-up but then as T.P. McLean wrote: "Grateful indeed were the New Zealanders, therefore, when, after twenty-seven minutes, Thorne, seizing a pass at least 70 yards distant from the relevant try line, reached that line by a sensational series of sidesteps and sprints. You could see him making up his mind to beat a man, you could watch him doing it and you knew that the opponent knew that he was going to be beaten, and it was all deliriously intoxicating."

Reyburn described the try: "The young centre came in at a tangent and taking the ball at full tilt headed straight up the middle. He evaded three would-be tacklers and then appeared merely to run past the full-back, to score a sensational 80-yard try under the posts." Thorne had been a dash of colour in a monochrome crowd, he said, but his reward from Fred Allen had been to be bawled out and told he should have passed.

J.B.G. Thomas provided the Welsh version. "The All Blacks eventually scored after 25 minutes' play through a lovely cut through by Thorne, who straightened out and ignored Steel outside him to cross between the posts."

And film of the try is HERE.

Sadly, Thorne was never given the chance to make the centre position his own and after the 1970 tour of South Africa was lost to the New Zealand game.

But in partnership with Bill Davis, he ensured mid-field back play was not forgotten and set the trend for players like Bruce Robertson, Joe Stanley, Frank Bunce and Conrad Smith to make their marks with the national side.

Fred the Needle tells his story

New Zealand rugby literature had always had a gap in it – until now.


The country's most successful coach of the All Blacks Fred Allen, his 100 percent record is almost Bradmanesque – the only reason it doesn't match that description is that his time at the helm was much shorter than the great Aussie batsman - has finally committed his life story to print.

Fred the Needle by Alan Sayers and Les Watkins. Published by Hachette New Zealand.

But in many ways his influence, on the game especially, was as significant as that of Bradman in cricket.

Allen, whose own playing career was marked by the spark of brilliance he injected as a lively and constructive first five-eighths, had the All Blacks from 1966-68 and, to the regret of many, decided to forsake a job he must surely have loved because of the politics of the Kremlinesque New Zealand Rugby Union of his day.

Allen did things differently, like allowing top-flight sports journalist of his day Alex Veysey into one of his team talks during a tour of Australia. Allen had thought it was only for background but somewhere along the way the wires got crossed and Veysey filed the story for the next day.

Allen's team talks were regarded as well worthy of hearing but the alickadoos back in the Huddart Parker building in downtown Wellington were unimpressed.

Sharing Allen's style with the world wasn't deemed appropriate. So rather than wait to be shot down, especially after he had refused to accede to the NZRU's request not to take Colin Meads, Ken Gray and Bruce McLeod on the famous 1967 tour to England, he resigned.

Normally it might not have mannered and the New Zealand rugby goliath would have rattled on. But New Zealand, in their unbeaten state, were shaping for a crack at South Africa in 1970, and a chance to finally win a Test series in the Republic.

However, Allen was not going to be the coach and to the eternal regret of his players, and the New Zealand public he wasn't at the helm when the tour occurred with the usual result.

All is told in full in his autobiography, penned by Alan Sayers and Les Watkins.

The great coach also talked about his desire to rid New Zealand rugby of the stodgy 10-man game which was almost strangling all who embraced it – a dreadful form of kick to touch, lineout, kick to touch, lineout, all the way down the sideline until reaching ground close to the line and pressuring the opposition into a mistake and scoring a try.

Allen had played his rugby in the spirited days after the end of World War Two with the famous Kiwis team which toured Britain, France and Germany to win a special place in rugby's annals for their celebration of life in rugby, freed from the restraints of conflict.

He wanted his team in 1967 to play similarly – and they did, unleashing a 15-man game which great Lions coach Carwyn James said later had transformed the game forever. James, four years later would coach the British and Irish Lions to their only series victory in New Zealand.

Because of his ability to inspire, there are many stories in his book that have not been published previously and they provide a sometimes emotional understanding of the forces that made him. His military service, his tough upbringing and his frustration on the 1949 tour to South Africa where New Zealand lost 0-4 are all part of the fabric of his life and have been faithfully recorded in a book which ensures his example will never be lost.

When placed alongside the earlier book written in partnership with TP McLean, Fred Allen on Rugby – more of a coaching book, the Allen method is well and truly captured for posterity.