Kevin Skinner

Kevin Skinner

Player information
Full name	Kevin Lawrence Skinner
birthday	November 24, 1927
place of birth	Dunedin , New Zealand
date of death	July 21, 2014
Place of death	Auckland , New Zealand
size	183 cm
society
society	Career ended
position	Piers and second row strikers
Clubs as active
Years	society	Games (points)
1945 / 47–1955 1956	Dunedin Pirates Waiuku District RFC
province
province	Career ended
position	Piers and second row strikers
Provinces as active
Years	province	Games (points)
1947–1955 1956	Otago Rugby Football Union Counties Manukau Rugby Union
National team
Years	National team	Games (points)
1949-1956	New Zealand	20 (3)
As of August 12, 2010

Kevin Lawrence Skinner (born November 24, 1927 in Dunedin , † July 21, 2014 in Auckland ) was a New Zealand rugby union player on the position of pillar and second-row striker and a heavyweight boxer .

life and career

Skinner went to St Kevins College in Oamaru until 1944 , where he played in its first rugby team and was their captain in his last two years at school. He began his club rugby career at the age of 17 with the Dunedin Pirates in 1945.

In 1946 he took a break from rugby. For this he worked as a boxer and won the heavyweight championship of Otago . The following year he was even New Zealand heavyweight champion. In 1947 he played rugby again for the Pirates and was appointed to the team of the Otago Rugby Football Union due to good performance . Because of the great competition there in the second row, he moved to the position of the pillar, on which he remained from now until the end of his career.

With Otago he won the Ranfurly Shield against Southland Rugby in 1947 . Otago was able to defend him in 18 games until 1950 before losing the Shield to Canterbury . In 1947 and 1948 he was also nominated for the South Island national team. His international debut for the New Zealand national team (All Blacks) gave Skinner on May 31, 1949 against the South African national team (Sprinboks) on a tour in South Africa . He played in all four internationals, which the All Blacks all lost, and thus the international series. A year later, however, he was part of the national team that defeated the British and Irish Lions , who were touring New Zealand, 3-0 in an international series (one game ended in a draw). Again he played in all four international matches. In 1951 and 1952 he won the Bledisloe Cup with New Zealand against Australia (Wallabies) and made his only attempt at international matches . In the two games against the Wallabies in 1952 he was captain of the national team.

In 1953/54 he took part in the European tour of the All Blacks, in which Skinner played in all five international matches against England , France , Ireland , Scotland and Wales . He then briefly resigned from rugby because he felt he could no longer reconcile it with his grocery store. Nevertheless, he was playing rugby again for the Pirates in 1955. In 1956 he moved to a farm in Waiuku in the north of the North Island . So he changed clubs and went to the local Waiuku District RFC. There he made it into the provincial team of the Counties Manukau Rugby Union .

His greatest success in rugby was beating the Springboks in the 1956 international series in New Zealand. It was the South Africans' first defeat in an international series at all. After the All Blacks had won the first game and lost the second, and the New Zealand pillars Mark Irwin and Frank McAtamney were injured, Skinner was nominated for the last two games. He stabilized the front row in the crowd , which helped the New Zealanders win these games. Even today, many South African players at the time accuse him of a brutal, violent style of play that is grossly unsportsmanlike and that he is said to have displayed at the time.

After this tour, Skinner only played club rugby on a small scale before he finally stopped playing rugby in 1958. From 1988 to 1990 he was President of the New Zealand Barbarians.

Web links

• Profile on allblacks.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ NZ Rugby mourns passing of Kevin Skinner. Announcement on voxy.co.nz from July 21, 2014 (accessed July 22, 2014).