Chris Laidlaw

Chris Laidlaw

Player information
Full name	Christopher Robert Laidlaw
birthday	November 16, 1943
place of birth	Dunedin , New Zealand
size	175 cm
society
society	Career ended
position	Half of the crowd
Clubs as active
Years	society	Games (points)
1962–1967 1968 1969 1970 1971	Otago University RFC Shirley RFC Oxford University RFC Otago University RFC Lyon Olympique Universitaire
province
province	Career ended
position	Half of the crowd
Provinces as active
Years	province	Games (points)
1962–1967 1968 1970	Otago RFU Canterbury RFU Otago RFU
National team
Years	National team	Games (points)
1963-1970	New Zealand	20 (12)

Christopher Robert Laidlaw (born November 16, 1943 in Dunedin , New Zealand ) is a former New Zealand rugby union player on the scrum half position . After his rugby career, he became a book author , diplomat , politician and radio host . He was also involved in the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in New Zealand in the 1990s .

Rugby career

Laidlaw went to King's High School in Dunedin, where he was already running for their first rugby team. After finishing school, he enrolled at the University of Otago in 1962 and joined the university's rugby club. Because of his achievements there, he was appointed to the Otago RFU selection team in the same year . He also ran in his debut season for the South Island and New Zealand universities selections .

In 1963 he played again for the South Island and was appointed to the squad of the New Zealand national team (All Blacks) for their tour in Europe . There he was not one of the regular players and missed four of the five international matches, but played in the 12: 6 win against the French national team .

He toured with a New Zealand U-23 selection as their captain in Australia in 1964 . With the All Blacks he successfully defended the Bledisloe Cup against the Australian national team (Wallabies) later that year . When the South African national team (Springboks) toured New Zealand the following year, he played in all four international matches, of which the All Blacks won three and lost one. A year later he also appeared in all four international matches against the British and Irish Lions, who are touring New Zealand . This time the All Blacks won all games.

In 1967 he toured Europe again with New Zealand. He played in three of the four international matches against England , Scotland and Wales . Here, too, he won all three games. The following year he defended the Bledisloe Cup again with the All Blacks against the Wallabies, where he ran up in the second international game as captain of the team. He also moved from Otago to Canterbury RFU . However, he only played once for Canterbury before moving to the UK to study for a year at the University of Oxford at Merton College after receiving a Rhodes Scholarship . There Laidlaw joined the rugby club of the university, and led this in 1969 as team captain to a victory over the Springboks touring Europe.

In 1970 he was back in New Zealand and took part as a national player in the Tour of the All Blacks in Australia and South Africa. He ran in the first three of four internationals against the Springboks, two of which were lost by the New Zealanders. He scored in the second international game, which the All Blacks won 9: 8, a try . Since the All Blacks also lost the last international game of the tour, they were defeated by the Springboks in the international series with 1: 3. After this tour, Laidlaw resigned from New Zealand and international rugby at the age of just 27. He then played in 1971 for one season with the French club Lyon Olympique Universitaire before finally retiring from active rugby.

In 1973, Laidlaw caused a stir in New Zealand when he published his book Mud in Your Eye: A worm's eye view of the changing world of rugby . The book cast a malicious look at New Zealand rugby, which annoyed some officials and former teammates. In the years that followed, however, he relativized some of his views expressed in the book.
In 2010 he published Somebody Stole My Game , another critical book about the development of rugby as a whole since its professionalization in 1995.

politics

Although Laidlaw himself played several times against the South African Springboks during his active rugby career, he was later in favor of a sporting boycott of South Africa due to the apartheid regime there . He is also a supporter of a New Zealand republic and opponent of the current form of government of the constitutional monarchy . He published his ideas on the identity of New Zealand in 1999 in his book Rights of Passage: Beyond the New Zealand Identity Crisis .

diplomat

In 1972 he went to the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs , for which he worked in Fiji , France and the UK. He was then appointed to the Commonwealth Secretariat as Assistant Secretary General Shridath Ramphal . Based on his experience, he was appointed New Zealand's first High Commissioner for Africa in 1986. His official seat was in Harare , Zimbabwe . In 1989 he moved back to New Zealand, where he took the post of Race Relations Conciliator and Commissioner for Human Rights.

Parliamentarians

In 1992 he moved after winning election in constituency Wellington central for the Labor Party as a delegate to the New Zealand House of Representatives a. In the following parliamentary elections in 1993, however, he was unable to defend his seat and was voted out again.

Local politician

He has been a council member of the Wellington Regional Council since 1998 . In the 2007 local elections, he won 24,757 votes and in the 2010 local elections, 24,838.

radio

Since 2000, Laidlaw has hosted the weekly program Sunday Morning on the public radio station Radio New Zealand .

Web links

• Profile on allblacks.com
• Profile at Otago University
• Further profile at Otago University (PDF; 72 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ About Us . Shirley Rugby Football Club , archived from the original on October 14, 2008 ; accessed on June 14, 2018 (English, original website no longer available).  
2. ↑ All Blacks . Otago Rugby Union , archived from the original on August 30, 2010 ; accessed on June 14, 2018 (English, original website no longer available).  
3. ↑ Chris Laidlaw despairs for rugby's future . stuff.co.nz. May 16, 2010. Retrieved August 20, 2011.
4. ↑ Chris Laidlaw: Charles never to reign over us? . nzherald.co.nz. Retrieved August 18, 2011.
5. ↑ Election results 2007 . Greater Wellington Regional Council. October 15, 2007. Archived from the original on October 28, 2007. Retrieved on August 19, 2011.
6. ^ 2010 Results »Greater Wellington Regional Council . Greater Wellington Regional Council. October 11, 2010. Retrieved August 19, 2011.
7. ↑ Chris Laidlaw . Radio New Zealand. Retrieved August 20, 2011.