Biggest Fight in Rugby History? Lions vs Springboks 1974

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Disgusting thugs were the 1974 Lions.

Same thing happened for the Boks in their 1956 tour to NZ. Their props had been dishing out thuggery against the ABs in their early tests so the ABs dragged in Kevin Skinner (a renowned boxer) to get some parity. A couple of scrums later, both Bok props were sorted and the trouble strangely stopped!!

How lon g did the fi ght go on - in the French test in Durban in 1971 the fight lasted 10 minutes and all the players were involved.

I doubt if any of those games mentioned were as violent as the Battle of Tucuman in 1993. Certainly not the first half.

The Springboks toured Argentina in 1993 and one of the dirt-tracker games was against Tucuman. In the first 20 minutes of that game there were 3 massive punch ups involving nearly all the players. The ref ended up red-carding one Tucuman player and one Springbok but he could have red carded nearly every player from both teams. Red cards were a rarity in those days but no exaggeration, nearly everyone would have had a red card by today's standards . . . even the mild and calm Henry Honiball threw a punch or two in that game.

Easily the most violent game I've ever seen . . . and I either watched or listened to every one of the 1974 Lions games (we didn't have TV back in those days) . . . even if I was just 12 years old.

I wonder what renowned boxers nz ever had. I seem to recall looking into how the wee kiwis have fared in boxing and found they only ever had one World champion!!!

We must be close to 50 by now.

I recall 50 plus year old Frans Botha fighting kiwi hope Sunni Bill Williams. The fight was shortened to prevent the hapless Williams from being knocked out by the old man Frans! Hahahahahahaha. NZ 's horizontal heavyweights.

Doubtless the Bok props facing Skinner knew if Skinner could get away with such blatant thuggery the ref was totally biased and any retaliation would see them off the field?

Not sure what relevance NZ’s boxing history has to this particular subject Hasbeeno but it’s not the first time you have drifted off a topic!

Interestingly they did a documentary on the Skinner controversy a while ago and they interviewed one of the Bok props (can’t remember his name) and he admitted that they were instructed to punch the living daylights out of the ABs props from the first test. The poor bloke was in tears and it had obviously been on his conscience all that time! He freely admitted to the thuggery which was big of him.

Moolaa, don’t get your hopes up about most Saffas agreeing that the Springboks have a reputation as a thug side. Who could forget that under the captaincy of the number one thug, Corne Krige, they only reinforced that image?