1937 South Africa Rugby Union Tour To Australasia

1937 South Africa Rugby Union Tour To Australasia

The 1937 South Africa tour to Australasia was one of the most successful Springbok tours in history, so much so that the touring team was nicknamed the "Invincibles". The squad was captained by Philip Nel.

The tour started on 26 June 1937 at the Sydney Cricket Ground in Sydney, Australia with a 9-5 win over the Wallabies. The Springboks followed up the win with an emphatic 26-17 win on 17 July at the same grounds, outscoring the Wallabies 6 tries to 3 and taking the series 2-0.

When the Springboks arrived in New Zealand later that year nobody expected them to win the series, as no other South African team had ever achieved the feat, and when the New Zealand leg of the tour kicked off on 14 August with a 13-7 loss to New Zealand at Athletic Park in Wellington, it seemed business as usual.

Mr Nel and his men had other ideas however as they came back to deal New Zealand two convincing defeats; a 13-6 win at Lancaster Park in Christchurch and a 17-6 win at Eden Park in Auckland, taking the series 2-1. The latter translates into a 27-6 (5 try to nil) win using today's point system.

The 1937 Springbok team remains the only Springbok team ever to have won a series in New Zealand and contained legendary players such as Danie Craven and Boy Louw.

Read more about 1937 South Africa Rugby Union Tour To Australasia:  Matches of The Tour

Famous quotes containing the words south, africa, union and/or tour:

    The developments in the North were those loosely embraced in the term modernization and included urbanization, industrialization, and mechanization. While those changes went forward apace, the antebellum South changed comparatively little, clinging to its rural, agricultural, labor-intensive economy and its traditional folk culture.
    C. Vann Woodward (b. 1908)

    I know no East or West, North or South, when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there shall I go.
    Mother Jones (1830–1930)

    In externals we advance with lightening express speed, in modes of thought and sympathy we lumber on in stage-coach fashion.
    Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)

    Do you know I believe that [William Jennings] Bryan will force his nomination on the Democrats again. I believe he will either do this by advocating Prohibition, or else he will run on a Prohibition platform independent of the Democrats. But you will see that the year before the election he will organize a mammoth lecture tour and will make Prohibition the leading note of every address.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)