More than just a headline.
July 19, 1981, saw the beginning of the Springbok tour in New Zealand. At the time South Africa was the All Black nemesis. Before 1981 there had been a total of 34 tests, 19 of which were won by the Springboks, 13 of which were won by the All Blacks with the remaining 2 drawn.
Despite the importance of the tour from a sporting perspective, New Zealanders as a whole were deeply divided as to whether the tour should go ahead as apartheid was still alive and well in South Africa. The resulting protests and confrontation surrounding the tour resulted in a cost for policing that was estimated to have exceeded NZ 15 million as compoared to the original allocation on NZ 2.7 million.
As you may well imagine, with this going on, events in Australian Rules Football seemed rather sedate.
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