Stu Wilson - rugby's laughing cavalier

Stuart Wilson, b Gore, 22 July 1954, d Tauranga, 8 June 2025, age 70. New Zealand 1976-83 34 Tests, 19 Test tries (NZ record), Wellington 89 games, 54 tries. All Blacks captain 1983 tour of Scotland and England.

'Stu' Wilson will forever be remembered for bringing a smiling face to the often austere heights of Test rugby. Laughter was a constant companion when he was around, often in the company of his provincial sidewinder, Bernie Fraser.

But that was off-the-field. It was a different story in the heat of action; Wilson had superb speed and the ability to choose the right running line to make the most of scoring opportunities.

Probably the most famous of his 19 Test tries was that he scored in the second Test against France in Paris in 1977.

He was still a new player on the scene having debuted in Argentina a year earlier in Graham Mourie's side.

New Zealand, on its first short tour of France, had been given a loaded itinerary playing several 'French Selections', full of Test-quality players given the task of softening up the All Blacks. They achieved their goal when handing the All Blacks a 13-18 defeat in the first Test at Toulouse.

But a week later, in the second Test, a ploy of running a gargantuan French pack off its feet was devised on the suggestion of flanker Kevin Eveleigh. Two-man lineouts were played, and balls kicked out were chased and thrown in quickly, leaving the French forwards bemused at what was happening and even asking Irish referee John West to stop the game as they couldn't keep up.

The result was a 15-3 win, the only try of the game being scored by Wilson with one of his superb 'against the grain' runs to give fullback Brian McKechnie the easiest of conversions.

Wilson would score the only try of another famous Test, the 1978 13-12 win over Wales in which McKechnie kicked a late penalty goal from the lineout, famously remembered for the falls from the lineout by locks Frank Oliver and Andy Haden that incensed Welsh fans but which referee Roger Quittenton said played no part in his decision for penalising Welsh lock Geoff Wheel for jumping off Oliver's shoulder.

It was on the same tour, New Zealand's first Grand Slam, that Wilson was at the forefront of the All Blacks marching into the post-match dinner in Munster after their 0-12 defeat with hands on the shoulder of the person in front of them singing "Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work we go."

In the first Test of the 1981 Springboks tour of New Zealand, Wilson scored a crucial try in New Zealand's 14-9 win.

Against the 1983 British and Irish Lions, he levelled the all-time All Blacks Test try-scoring record in the 15-8 win at a frozen Carisbrook in Dunedin.

Two weeks later, he claimed the record with a hat-trick of tries in the final Test won 38-6 by the All Blacks.

His 19 tries pale compared to modern records where up to 15 Tests a year are played as opposed to the five or six played in the amateur era.

Those amateur laws forced Wilson from the scene earlier than was warranted. He wrote a book, Ebony and Ivory, with his Wellington teammate Bernie Fraser, and rather than seek to take the often-used ploys to defy the International Rugby Board's [World Rugby now] ruling that players could not take royalties from books written, Wilson decided to retire.

He became a regular comments man on TV coverage of games.

His Test record of tries was surpassed by John Kirwan in 1988.