Naming 1940 All Blacks for SA never intended for 1939

More trials were to be played in 1940

One of the great unanswered questions in New Zealand rugby has surrounded the conjecture on the likely team selector Ted McKenzie might have chosen to make a tour of South Africa in 1940.

All manner of experts in the years since have proffered suggestions on what the make-up of the side might have been, but McKenzie never released his selection.

There may be a very good reason for that.

The New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) decided at its annual meeting in 1939, by a vote of 53-28, that trials would be played in 1940 just before the team left for the tour.

As late as October 2, 1939, after that season's trials, which were staged to reduce the need for the previous system of regional trials culminating in the inter-island match early in 1940, the Evening Post’s Sports Post reported,

With the war clouding the future, the general atmosphere of uncertainty had a very marked effect upon the New Zealand Rugby trials. It was with a view to selecting a team to go to South Africa next year that the trials were arranged, the series to be topped off with further trials early next season.

Playing fewer trials in 1940 was because the NZRU wanted to avoid, if possible, the decline in fitness the 1928 All Blacks, who were selected in 1927, suffered when taking six weeks to reach South Africa.

Team member in 1928, Mark Nicholls, who was opposed to playing trials in 1940, said the 1928 side had, 'a thoroughly good time in everything except football' when stopping off at Australian ports before the tour.

They arrived in Durban unfit, then made a long, slow journey to Cape Town arriving on a Monday to play on the Wednesday. They lost their second game and only won their third, played at 4000 feet altitude, because the opposition was so poor.

Nicholls told the Sports Post, the side took 10-12 games to approach their New Zealand form.

Instead of playing trials before the team announcement, Nicholls said the side could play games in New Zealand before leaving, and then play games in Australia. It was also possible with faster ships, their travel could take only 19 days from Wellington to Durban.

The trials staged in 1939 after the outbreak of the Second World War were part of McKenzie's intended selection system, with good performers at the forefront of the 1940 trial selections.

He acknowledged that big forwards would struggle to be fit in time for the 1940 trials and their performances would need to be viewed with that in mind.

It was anticipated these demands would require an earlier start than usual for the 1940 season, possibly before Easter that year which fell on March 24.

But by early 1940, it was realised the tour would not take place, NZRU chairman Stan Dean's hope that the war might have 'fizzled out' by Christmas 1939, did not materialise.

The reason McKenzie never named his team would appear to be because the trials were never completed.