Sixty years ago this week, my first sports story appeared in the New Zealand Herald. Somehow I’d got the ear of the iconic Sir Terry McLean, whose word at the time was revered.
Thanks to his encouragement, readers were treated to 600 or so words on (I am not makingthis up) problems with the sprig size on imported rugby boots.
In the decades since, I’ve had the enormous good fortune to be involved in stories that hopefully resonated more than the dangers of small, sharp sprigs.
Phil Gifford's first story published in the New Zealand Herald, in 1965. Photo / Supplied
Like everyone else in the main stadium at the Mexico Olympic Games I was astounded to see the winner of the men’s 200 metres, Tommie Smith, and the bronze medallist, John Carlos, bow their heads and hold black gloved fists up in black power salutes at the victory ceremony.
US runners Tommie Smith (centre) and John Carlos raise fists in racial protest at the 1968 Olympics. Photo / Supplied
Two days later, I was sent by the head of the New Zealand Press Association team, of which I was the junior member, to the American team’s press conference. It was announced they were being sent home in disgrace. The conference over, I naively asked a Texan journalist if he felt the punishment was too severe. “Too harsh?” he snarled. “Those assholes should be thrown in jail.”
November 1969. Twickenham
It didn’t cross my mind on a crisp, clear autumn day in London that at the opening game of the South African team’s tour of Britain, where the visitors faced Oxford University, the tiny crowd of 5000 people and I were witnesses to the first anti-Springbok protests.
In a Herald story (sent by mail) I noted there had been barbed wire fences inside the ground, cutting off all but one terrace and one stand, and how the pitch was ringed by police officers standing shoulder to shoulder. I called the match “probably the spookiest game of rugby ever played. And the tour it opened seems likely to be the unhappiest ever made”. As a 22-year-old on his big Overseas Experience, I could never have guessed the 1981 Boks tour of New Zealand would make the 1969 tour look tame.
June 1970. Edinburgh
Working for NZPA again, the 1970 Commonwealth Games were an almost unmitigated delight. The one exception came near the finish of the women’s 1500 metres. Security was casual then, and a young colleague, Alan Thurston, and I slipped out of the press room next to the track at the main stadium to watch the end of the race, lurking behind preoccupied officials.
Into the home straight, to our noisy, unprofessional delight, New Zealander Sylvia Potts was heading for a gold medal. Then came calamity. With barely three or four strides to the finish her legs gave way.
Kiwi runner Sylvia Potts falls at the end of the 1500 metres at the 1970 Edinburgh Commonwealth Games. Photo / Supplied
To this day, I clearly remember the sickening thump, and whoosh of expelled air as Potts crashed forward onto the track. It remains the most unexpected and devastating disappointment I’ve ever seen in Kiwi sport.
February 1974. Christchurch
By wonderful coincidence, I watched the greatest 1500 metres race of the decade on the last day of the Christchurch Commonwealth Games sitting with our greatest middle-distance runner, Peter Snell. For two weeks, I’d been ghost-writing a daily column with Snell, who proved to be a hugely intelligent deep thinker, as his future career as a medical researcher in Texas would show.
New Zealand middle-distance legend Peter Snell. Photo / Paul Estcourt
In Christchurch on a warm Saturday afternoon, we saw Tanzania’s Filbert Bayi streak away from the gun in the 1500 metres. By the time he entered the home straight, the crowd was screaming, as a 21-year-old Kiwi, John Walker, was the only man close enough to possibly chase him down. But Bayi won, in 3m 32.16s, breaking American Jim Ryun’s world record, of 3m 33.1s. Amazingly in second place, Walker also bettered Ryun’s time, clocking 3m 32.52s.
As the uproar settled I had to ask Snell: “Could you have beaten Bayi?”
Snell smiled.
“I know this: I would have been on his shoulder going into the home straight.”
Winter, 1981. The Springbok tour
One of the great Kiwi journalists, Tony Reid, and I covered the chaos that was the 1981 South African tour of New Zealand. It was the most surreal eight weeks of my life. As a rugby tragic I saw at close range the sport I loved tearing communities apart.
The 1981 Springbok Tour: 'The most surreal eight weeks of my life.' Photo / John Sefton
After the Waikato game was cancelled because Rugby Park in Hamilton was swarmed by protesters, I worked with Tony on “Days Of Rage”, an iconic story from the tour. In Parliament, the Minister of Police, Ben Couch, a former All Black, and a keen supporter of apartheid-era sporting contact with South Africa, said he was disgusted with the article, which was “riddled with emotive supposition and inaccuracies”.
It wasn’t. The story was ultimately honoured at that year’s New Zealand media awards.
June, 1995. Johannesburg
The Rugby World Cup final. As a Kiwi I loved reporting on the All Blacks Cup victories in 1987, 2011 and 2015.
South Africans of all races later told me that when the first post-apartheid President Nelson Mandela walked out to meet the teams before the kick-off, it was a moment that gave a glimmer of hope to the idea that decency and unity might emerge from 46 years of brutal repression of non-white people.
Lewis won easily on points. But the event itself sticks in my mind for the promoters treating journalists covering the fights as if we were some sort of minor royalty. My wife and I stayed in a suite the size of half a footy field at the Mandalay Bay hotel at a special media rate you’d expect to pay for a flea-ridden motel.
Sweat flies from the body of David Tua as he absorbs a punch from Lennox Lewis. Photo / Kenny Rodger
The press seats were just two rows from the ring. Kiwi colleague Duncan Johnstone murmured to me: “There must be some mistake. They’ll kick us out soon.”
To complete the occasion, there was a polite tap on my left shoulder and a quiet request to let the speaker take his seat. I watched the fight shoulder to shoulder with former world heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield.
January, 2018. Waihi Beach
I feel the most important story I’ve ever written was when I asked Wayne Smith if he’d be prepared to share the details of having his prostate removed after cancerous tumours had been discovered.
Having been treated for prostate cancer myself in 2010, I was acutely aware of how so many men recoiled from the intimate medical checks that could potentially save their lives.
New Zealand rugby coaching legend Wayne Smith. Photo / Andrew Cornaga, Photosport
Wayne was happy to help, on the very strong grounds that “it might encourage guys in their 50s to go and get the tests. If it’s there, but it’s detected early, you can fix it”.
Wayne felt that if one man took the advice and was cured it was worth revealing his very personal details.
A highly experienced urologist said to me a couple of weeks after publication: “An All Black legend encouraging guys to get checked is going to resonate more with a Kiwi bloke than a roomful of medical experts”.
