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  • NZ Rugby World

    On the Right Side of History

    Aug 12, 2021 4 minutes
    PHOTOS: New Zealand Herald Archives

    John Minto tried out for the Napier Boys High School 3rd XV but didn’t get in.

    “I was tall, but I was skinny. I had no bulk and no speed,” Minto says. Undeterred, he later coached rugby for three years while he taught physics at Auckland’s Massey High School.

    “I enjoyed rugby. I played it at school and I coached sixth grade for three years when I started teaching.”

    This seems incongruous with a man who, aged just 28, became the face of a nationwide movement intent on stopping the Springbok rugby tour to New Zealand in 1981.

    Sitting at a small table in the Auckland Irish Society hall at Fowlds Park, where the marches against the third test of that

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