KeithQuinnRugby
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Always popular and obviously caring too - The Kenyan rugby sevens team and their management.
20 February 2015
I found this quote the other day while trying to find out a few notes about the 2015 Kenyan Rugby Sevens team ahead of the next HSBC Sevens World Series event in Las Vegas. When the star Kenyan try-scorer Collins Injera was urgently called home after the earlier Wellington Sevens to be with his wife who was expecting a baby any day suddenly it was considerable news. I put the news comment in here just because I like the way the Kenyan team management speak about their man. Enjoy it...
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In Amsterdam the Farah Palmer-led Black Ferns blitzed USA 44-12 in the final. Out of 5 games played in 14 days the 44 score was NZ's lowest in any game!
BATTY, GRANT
Wellington, New Zealand
15 internationals for N. Zealand 1972–77
The Scottish TV commentator Bill McLaren best described this busy and talented All Black. He said that Batty went at his game like a ‘little buzz-saw’, and indeed he did.
Grant Batty was a rarity in All Black rugby of the early 1970s. He was a back (a wing mostly) who had genuine speed, aggression and inventiveness. Although small in stature, he was never one to step back from a physical confrontation, no matter how imposing his opponent might have been. Not everyone in New Zealand could cope with a player of his brilliance and physical approach, and although New Zealanders were more than grateful on several occasions for his feisty presence on the field, he was always regarded as controversial.
Batty was received in a similar light wherever he played in the rugby world. Cardiff crowds booed him when he played there with the All Blacks in 1972–73. He replied by playing brilliantly. South African crowds treated him the same way. Batty responded by showing immense courage and playing on even after sustaining a near-crippling knee injury. Such was his value to the All Blacks that they insisted on playing him in the tests even though he had to run about with a metal cast hidden under his knee bandages.
Sadly, Batty’s knee problems became so bad he was forced out of rugby at the age of 25.
Controversial he might have been, but the crowds in New Zealand and elsewhere always flocked in to watch Batty.
He later shifted to Australia and by the 1990s had begun a long-term association on the coaching staff of the Queensland Reds team and other club sides.
Fiji played its first test match is bare feet. Until what year?
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