Jamie Salmon: 1981, the All Blacks tour Romania and France

Aged 20, I got picked for the All Blacks in an unofficial test against Fiji at Eden Park. We won 33-0. I partnered regular All Black centre Bill Osbourne, the great Graham Mourie was captain and future captain Andy Dalton also played. We scored six tries though none for me, but I do remember Mourie telling me that the final pass I gave to three of the try-scorers is just as good as scoring. My confidence rose.

In 1981, I was selected for the All Blacks for the ten-game tour to Romania and France. Off the field it was chaos as Romania Rugby had no money to look after us properly and the French organisational skills were appalling. We had a manager and a coach both out of their depth so Graham Mourie ran it on the field and Andy Haden off it.

Just to give you a glimpse of the off-field debacle, it started with our flight to Romania which went Auckland / Los Angeles (stay one night) / Washington / Paris / Bucharest. When we arrived it was two days to our first game, the exact same time it had taken to fly from Auckland. And for the avoidance of doubt, all done in economy class.

I was fine in LA as I celebrated my 21st birthday quite late. We popped into Washington so that our Manager Pat Gill could introduce us all to his brother Frank Gill, NZ High Commissioner to the US and for him to have a family reunion.

We landed in Paris and then waited hours for Romania’s national airline, Tarom, to take us to Bucharest. Upon arrival early in the evening bed beckons, although to lift our spirits we are told we are on a 7.30am flight to Constanta the next morning, again on Tarom, which I hope has got better over the years as it was horrendous back then.

At that time Romania was a communist country and run by Nicolae Ceausescu. He ran the country for his own ill-gotten gains for thirty years and his policies were so bad that rationing on a major scale became the norm for Romanian people. We saw queues and queues of people lining up just to buy eggs, which were rationed to one per person. Our management team and captain Graham Mourie went to an official welcoming dinner put on by the Government – caviar, foie gras, steak – after which Graham said to a Government Minister, ‘So this is how you Socialists live’.

We played two games, one on the beautiful coastal resort of Constanta and the test match in Bucharest where, as we emerged from the tunnel, we were escorted by soldiers holding AK 47s which, as I was making my test debut, makes me pretty unique I guess. At the after-match dinner I tried to make conversation with my opposite number. I reckon he said ‘I am happy’ about twenty times. For the record, we won 14-6 which as the scoreline suggests was a distinctly average match, though I did score a try. To be honest I was more worried about doing the haka properly before the game than anything else. It is worth noting that until 1987 the haka was only done when the All Blacks played test matches overseas, never in New Zealand. We practised in a hotel car park.

Our liaison officer there was an ex-international player, Alexander Pop, who did everything he could to help us despite the restrictions and obstacles put in his way. He told us of his life, his rugby career and his family. His son had paraplegia and he was desperate to take him to the US for specialist treatment, so unbeknown to him we organised a collection and gave him a pretty hefty donation. His reaction was amazing and his smile wider when he saw it was in US dollars. In 1982, with the help of others Alex, managed to get his son to the US and after a few visits he himself was granted political asylum and has lived there ever since.

We had to keep it very quiet but it made our tour to a stricken communist country more than worthwhile, as did the individual letter of thanks that Alex wrote to every All Black on that tour.

With a certain irony, my last ever time in an international jersey was in May 1989 for England’s game against Romania in Bucharest when I was on the bench. Ceausescu was still in power, the country was still in turmoil and the landscape hadn’t changed. Six months later, his time was up and he and his wife were executed by firing squad on Christmas Day 1989 after being found guilty of economic sabotage and genocide. The trial started and concluded on the same day as the execution so I guess the communist judicial system can be very quick, though the process did draw massive criticism internationally.

I was pleased I had seen a communist country. A dour, dank, grey depressing mood set against the architectural beauty of Bucharest is an unusual contrast. The people predominately dressed in black, no colour anywhere, nervousness and tension vividly apparent.

Easy for the AB’s though. We are off to Paris to enjoy the smell of fresh coffee and the boulangeries of France for a month. We had eight games, two were tests, five were against French Selection XVs and one against the French Barbarians. So basically the French selectors had a series of trial matches and picked who they liked. I played against Didier Camberero three times in the midweek matches. We played in great stadiums in great cities and towns – Strasbourg, Claremont, Grenoble, Bayonne, Perpignan, Toulouse, La Rochelle and of course Paris – and the hotels, food and beverage was a notch or ten up from Romania.

I am 21 and an All Black. It doesn’t get much better. And on the field we became the first All Black team to win a series in France after a close win in a dreadfully dull game in Toulouse but a brilliant win in Paris in a great match.

Add a comment