SOUTH AFRICA beckons for Adam Brunton, Cecil Craigie and Marshall Barker.
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The trio are members of the Lloyd McDermott Aboriginal Rugby Development Team which will tour South Africa this month.
Barker and Craigie live in Moree and attend Courallie High School in Moree while Brunton is from Toomelah and is a student at Boggabilla Central School.
Former Wallaby and Moree resident Jim Boyce said the opportunity for the boys to tour South Africa as members of an Aboriginal team was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
“It’s fantastic really. All the boys going on the tour are pioneers in a sense,” Boyce said from Moree on Wednesday.
“Many of them are from small communities such as Condobolin, Wreck Bay and Toomelah.”
“I had a chat with Adam (Brunton) the other day.
“He’ll be getting some material together that’s representative of the Boggabilla and Toomelah communities to take with him.”
Brunton will be able to swap mementos with host families in South Africa in a cultural exchange of great significance.
A highlight of the tour will take place when the Lloyd McDermott side plays a curtainraiser to the South Africa-Australia tri nations Test at Ellis Park, Johannesburg on July 28.
Boyce, a winger, played 12 Tests for Australia, including six against the Springboks in 1963 and 1965. He played four of those Tests on Australia’s tour of South Africa in 1963.
A commemorative dinner at NSW Parliament House tonight will honour seven Wallabies – Jim Boyce, Tony Abrahams, Barry MacDonald, Bruce Taafe, Terry Forman, James Roxburgh and Dr Paul Darveniza – who protested against the South Africans’ 1971 tour of Australia.
Funds raised from the dinner will go towards the Lloyd McDermott Aboriginal Rugby Development Team to tour South Africa.
Tonight’s dinner is in particular remembrance of the demonstrations against the Sydney-South Africa clash at the SCG which took place on July 6, 1971 – exactly 30 years ago to the day.
Boyce had finished his playing career in 1965 and in 1966 left for America.
He returned to Australia in 1970 but was at the SCG on July 6, 1971 as a protester.
“I was outside the SCG proclaiming to people why Australians shouldn’t be playing against an all-white South African side, a side picked on a racial basis,” he said.
A lot has happened since 1971. The apartheid regime is no more and international teams of all kinds regularly tour South Africa.”
