Album Review: Various, Rucks, Tries and Choruses

The Howard Morrison Quartet gave us the classic 'My Old Man's An All Black'. File Photo / NZ Herald

Graham Reid, once a handy winger and goal kicker, gets in a rugger mood.

You'd hope in some provincial public bar or rugby club a wiseguy is cracking them up by busting a rhyme about SBW, the ABs and sponsorship deals which pivot on "How many dudes do we know like this?" and the locals are bellowing, "Too many, too many".

But you suspect not, because since the professional era - as this chronological double disc collection of 33 rugby, and guilt-by-association, songs indicates - we've come over all serious. Rugby songs today are based on buzzwords like nation, pride, black and power.

Most in the second half here are nationalistic, chest-beating, anthemic power ballads which tell the world you "don't mess around with the men in black", that We Are One and we Feel the Fire (John Rowles).

It wasn't always so.

The Howard Morrison Quartet's My Old Man's An All Black (1960) with a political text about the forthcoming tour to apartheid South Africa ("There's no horis in that scrum") is an important inclusion. And funny. Former Quartet member Gerry Merito later poked at a Maori loss to the Springboks noting "no Pakehas in that scrum".

Elsewhere are the truly awful Rugby Rock in 1960 (young wastrel swaps rock and Elvis for rugby and Don Clarke), and the nudge-wink camping of Des Gay and His Foolish Fags on Pine Tree Des Gay. So bad they are hilarious.

Reon Murtha calls a bargain sale as a rugby match (1962), All Blacks are acknowledged (Fergie McCormick on Lew Pryme's remake of Sink the Bismark as Fantastic Fergie) and Garner Wayne and his Saddle Pals' All Black Hall of Fame namechecks 64 players in four and a half minutes. Then things get serious: the Canterbury Rugby Team celebrate reclaiming the Ranfurly Shield in 1970 (The Name of the Game) and Mooloo Magic's Up and Under (1980) acclaims the Waikato front row. There's Gray Bartlett and Brendan Dugan's All Black's Song (1976), the synth-slashed We Know How to Win (1987, vocals by Bunny Walters and Hammond Gamble) and Rob Guest's Celebration, the official 1987 Rugby World Cup song.

There is the dire Silent Majority's Let Them Go (1985) demanding the ABs go to South Africa despite anti-apartheid protests (because we've got the better team). The counter-argument was Don't Go by Right Left of Centre (Don McGlashan, Ivan Zagni, Chris Knox and others) which at least has a clever beat and Afropop guitars.

Murray Grindlay's Give'Em a Taste of Kiwi got crowds going and he also weighed in with the exciting Celtic rock of Haere Ra in 2003 (sung by Fiona McDonald). Ian Morris wrote the hand-clap hip-hop My Black Jersey in 2005 with Papa-Pa (Rawiri Morell) on persuasive vocals.

Amid the recent seriousness however is the Miramar Chess Club's I'll Never Be an All Black, a welcome respite from chest swelling and bullish baritone cliches.

On the evidence here, we had more fun and better songs when we didn't take rugby - and ourselves - so seriously.

Stars: 4/5
Verdict: From crass humour to hip-hop and power ballads, rugby was sometimes the winner on the day

- TimeOut