England's cancelled rugby tour: Threats to players and accusations of cowardice

Steve Borthwick’s squad is the seventh that England have taken to Argentina since the first tour took place in 1981, following the International Board’s ruling that full caps could be awarded for matches against non-board countries.

But eight years earlier, England, boosted by winning their two Five Nations games and then landing the International Sevens at Murrayfield, were due to play six games in South America.

Led by team manager and chairman of selectors Sandy Sanders and coach John Elders, they were scheduled to fly to Buenos Aires on August 25 and return on September 16, the day after playing the second of two Test matches.

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Tours to Argentina were not new. In 1910, a British Isles team featuring 16 Englishmen and three Scots visited. The organisers named the team the “English Rugby Union team”, but the hosts called them the British Combined.

The Lions returned in 1927 and again in 1936, when Leicester and England scrum-half Bernard Gadney led the Lions to South America for a tour when no caps were awarded.

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A combined side comprising students from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, often featuring international players, made the trip in 1948, 1956, 1965, and again in 1971, with games played in Buenos Aires and Rosario.

Argentina were one of the emerging nations in world rugby, and the trip captured the imagination of players, many of whom, in the amateur era, often had to plead with employers for time off or even use annual leave to go on tours.

Some, like Moseley fly-half Martin Cooper, quit his job as an accountant in the accounts department of the Beatties store in Wolverhampton after being told by the company they couldn’t spare him.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and I might not get the chance again. You’re only at the top for a short space of time, especially if you’re an England player.

“I’d hate to get to 65 and look back at what I’d done in life and think, ‘well I could have gone to Argentina with England if I’d only given my job up’,” he told the Wolverhampton Express and Star.

In February 1973, Cooper and England received notice of what they could expect in South America when one of Argentina’s top First Division teams, Belgrano, defeated leading club side Rosslyn Park 19-9, scoring three tries to none.

Belgrano, who had raised £20,000 to tour England and Wales, and had beaten Streatham-Croydon 29-9 in their first match, continued their domestic policy of not selecting hookers, instead playing three props.

They scrummaged effectively, and a weakened Park side had to try four different players at prop in the second half to try and halt the onslaught with minimal effect.

It was a high point for Belgrano, one of the four clubs that founded the Argentine Rugby Union in 1899 and which had won the Torneo de la URBA ten times, losing 11-10 to Wasps, 38-20 to Public School Wanderers and 29-6 in Bridgend.

However, within a month, the wheels had started to come off the game in Argentina when the military government of General Alejandro Lanusse seized control of the UAR and appointed its own administrator.

The trouble started when the UAR gave their blessing to another leading Buenos Aires side, San Isidro, to play two games in Rhodesia and four in South Africa in defiance of government orders.

The UAR had been repeatedly told to cancel the tour because Argentina stood by the United Nations resolution banning relations with Rhodesia because of its racial discrimination.

General Lanusse then lost a general election to Hector Campora, who two months later resigned to allow Juan Perón to run for and win the presidency. It was Argentine guerrillas linked to him who made threats to kidnap players. Letters written in Spanish by the Revolutionary Armed Forces claimed rugby was “an oligarchic sport and a symbol of imperialism”, with kidnapping and ransom a major revenue stream for such groups.

In the first six months of 1973 alone, there were more than 60 abductions, and among the missing was Charles Lockwood, a British businessman and the brother of EMI chairman Sir Joseph, who was seized outside his home.

An £800,000 ransom was paid for his release, but in August 1975 Lockwood was again taken, only to be freed a month later when police shot dead four captors.

The threats were enough to spook the RFU, and the first act of President Mickey Steele-Bodger, announced after taking office at the Union’s AGM, was to cancel the tour.

“It is with much regret that at a committee meeting today, the decision was taken to cancel this tour in view of threats to players which cannot be ignored in view of recent occurrences of this nature.

“We have sent a cable to the Argentine rugby union saying that we much regret the decision has been made to cancel this tour. Obviously, it is a tremendously sad decision.

“We are promised maximum security. We felt it impossible to fulfil a tour of three weeks’ duration under what would have been unbearable stress and strain to the players and their families.

“We have been in touch with the Foreign Office, though I prefer not to reveal what their advice was. It was our intention to continue with the tour, but one particular letter proved a key factor in us deciding to cancel.

“After all, there are still people who have been kidnapped and have not been found yet, and we appreciate Argentina is currently experiencing a great deal of internal difficulty,” said Steele-Bodger.

Bristol and England hooker John Pullin, who would have been the captain, had led the side in 1972 when they played Ireland in Dublin despite IRA threats that had caused Wales and Scotland to cry off.

Speaking to the Bristol Evening Post from his farm near Aust, he admitted that he was disappointed that his first trip to Argentina had been called off.

“This would have been the first time I had gone to Argentina, and the first time an English team had toured there. I guess there must have been some substance to the threats.

“There were threats made before the international with Ireland, but we went ahead and played. Maybe people would have been a bit nervous if they had gone over.

“I think it would have been a good opportunity for the England side to play together. But I don’t think the fact we are not playing is going to affect us for the next season,” he said.

The RFU’s decision provoked a furious reaction in South America, where England were described as pirates in the newspaper Cronica, which said: “The tour was arranged during the previous government rule.

“And kidnappings were quite frequent then. The reason for the calling off is money. They are simply not coming here because New Zealand pays more.”

Another newspaper claimed that the real reason for the tour being cancelled was that England feared defeat.

Carlos Tozzi, ARU press secretary, said, “England’s cancellation was made in a hasty manner on distorted information.”

He stated that the ARU had spent £12,000 on preparations and that tickets worth another £8,000 had been sold, while he was part of a delegation sent to London to try to save the tour.

But despite the last-minute plea, the RFU said it was too late to change plans to travel to Fiji and New Zealand, who became free after a tour by South Africa was cancelled because of possible anti-apartheid demonstrations.

As a result, Argentina cancelled a game at Twickenham after their autumn tour to Ireland and Scotland, arranged “as a gesture of friendship”, while Romania stepped in and sent a team to Argentina instead.

England went to Fiji and won by a point, 13-12, before being defeated by three New Zealand provincial sides – 6-3 by Taranaki in New Plymouth, 25-16 in Wellington, and 19-12 by Canterbury in Christchurch.

But Pullin’s side, dubbed the famous “White Tornadoes”, went into the history books after winning the only Test 16-10 at Eden Park, Auckland – the first ever victory by an England team on Kiwi soil.