Book red-cards ex-PM

David Lange is accused of bribery in the new rugby biography. File Photo / NZ Herald

Allegations that former Prime Minister David Lange attempted to bribe a New Zealand rugby official to stop the proposed 1985 All Black tour of South Africa have come to light in a new book.

Jock McLean, the son of revered rugby writer and author Sir Terry McLean, came across the allegation while sorting through his father's papers in preparation for the book TP - the life and times of Sir Terry McLean, written by Herald on Sunday sports editor Paul Lewis.

Lange allegedly offered a Royal Honour, possibly a knighthood, to Cecil Blazey, the then-chairman of the New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU), if he persuaded the union to cancel the tour.

Jock McLean came across a note written by his father to a colleague in a South African news outlet, effectively accusing Lange of the bribe, an accusation that first emerged in the draft pages of Our National Game, a history of New Zealand rugby written by prominent Kiwi sports writer Ron Palenski.

Contacted by a reporter who had seen a draft of the book before it was published in 1992, Lange immediately threatened an injunction unless the offending passage was removed.

The publishers agreed - not because they thought the information was wrong, but out of concern for the then-83-year-old Blazey, who was ill and close to death.

"From another source, I have secured a copy of the passage," writes McLean. "As written, it is extremely damaging to Lange."

In the end, the All Blacks didn't visit South Africa that year after Justice Maurice Casey granted an interim injunction to stop the tour. The All Blacks did not officially tour there again until after the fall of apartheid.

McLean's notes reveal that pressure of a different sort was applied to All Black coach Fred "The Needle" Allen to stop three All Blacks from going on the 1967 tour of Britain.

Allen was told by the then-chairman of the NZRFU, Tom Morrison, that the union would be happy if Colin Meads, Ken Gray and Bruce McLeod were not chosen for the tour. "The implication was that the NZRFU wanted to avoid embarrassment which might be caused by the rough play of those men," McLean wrote.

As it happened, Meads was ordered off on the tour in the test against Scotland at Murrayfield, won by the All Blacks, 14-3.

Allen, now 90, confirmed the approach and said he took no notice. "It was nothing to do with [the NZRFU]. They were three of our best players and I was buggered if I was going to leave them at home."