Chris Laidlaw

Christopher Robert Laidlaw ( born November 16, 1943 in Dunedin, New Zealand ) is a former New Zealand rugby union player at the position of scrum Halbs. After his rugby career, he was an author, diplomat, politician, and radio host. In addition, he was active in the 1990s for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in New Zealand.

Rugby career

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

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

He toured with a New Zealand U -23 as their captain in 1964 in Australia. With the All Blacks, he defended later in the same year successfully completed the Bledisloe Cup against the Australian national team ( Wallabies ). As the South African national team ( Springboks ) it undertook a tour in New Zealand in the year, he played in all four internationals, of which the All Blacks won three and lost one. A year later he also ran in all four internationals on against the touring British and Irish Lions in New Zealand. This time the All Blacks won all the games.

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

In 1970 he was back in New Zealand again and took over as national team at the Tour of the All Blacks in part in Australia and South Africa. He ran on the first three of the four matches against the Springboks, two of which were lost by New Zealanders. He scored in the second international match, the All Blacks won with 9:8, a try. As the All Blacks also lost the last international match of the tour, they were subject to the Springboks in the international match series with 1:3. After this tour Laidlaw came back with only 27 years of New Zealand and international rugby. He then played in 1971 yet for a season with the French club Lyon Olympique Universitaire, before he resigned from active rugby final.

1973 saw Laidlaw for some media stir in New Zealand, when he released his book Mud in Your Eye: published A worm 's eye view of the changing world of rugby. The book cast a sardonic look at the New Zealand Rugby what some disgruntled officials and former teammates. However, in the following years, he qualified some of his views expressed in the book. In 2010 he published with Somebody Stole My Game is another critical book about the development of the entire rugby since its professionalization in 1995.

Policy

Although Laidlaw has played during his playing rugby career itself repeatedly against the South African Springboks, he was later for a sporting boycott of South Africa due to the apartheid regime there. He is also a proponent of a Republic of New Zealand and opponents of the current state form of constitutional monarchy. His ideas as to the identity of New Zealand in 1999 he published 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. Subsequently, he was appointed as Assistant Secretary General Shridath Ramphal into the Commonwealth Secretariat. Based on his experiences, he was appointed in 1986 to the first New Zealand High Commissioner for Africa. Its headquarters was located in Harare, Zimbabwe. In 1989 he moved back to New Zealand where he took over the post of the Race Relations Conciliator and Commissioner for Human Rights.

Parliamentarian

In 1992 he moved to winning election in constituency Wellington central for the Labour Party as a Member of the New Zealand House of Representatives. In the following parliamentary elections in 1993, however, he could not defend his seat and was voted out again.

Local politicians

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

Radio

Since 2000, Laidlaw moderated the public radio station Radio New Zealand the weekly show Sunday Morning.