Sid Going, who has died aged 80, was one of rugby union’s greatest scrum-halves as well as one of the most exciting players ever to turn out for New Zealand.
In his prime between 1967 and 1977, when he played 29 Tests for the All Blacks, Going was an irresistible, unorthodox presence behind the scrum, invariably willing to try something different and always happy to run close with his forwards.
An enthusiastic proponent of running rugby, he was at his most dangerous in broken play – as he showed when New Zealand met Barbarians in Cardiff in 1973 in the “greatest game ever played”, a spectacle in which he played his full entertaining part. By then Going had become one of the most recognisable figures in rugby, prematurely balding but sporting luxuriant sideburns and a long, drooping moustache.
Short, stocky and exceptionally strong in the upper body, he could shrug off tackles from men twice his size, and was a free-spirited, muscular livewire who loved to express himself. A master of the reverse pass, he also had a fine kicking game and for a time was a serious rival to the global scrum-half supremacy of Gareth Edwards.
Sidney Milton Going was born on August 19 1943 in Kawakawa, a small town at the northern end of New Zealand’s North Island, where his parents were farmers. He was of Maori descent on his mother’s side, and his ancestry was intermingled with the Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Hine tribes. He learned his rugby on the back lawn with two of his four brothers, Ken and Brian, and then at Northland College in Kaikohi, before switching to the Church College of New Zealand, a Mormon-run secondary school.
Rugby appeared to be a secondary consideration once he had finished his education, as at the age of 19 he moved to Alberta in Canada to become a missionary. But when his two-year posting came to an end he returned to the family farm and was able to re-focus on the game he loved – although his faith remained strong enough to refuse to play or train on Sundays.
Going’s rugby career had begun as a teenager at the Mid Northern club, after which he was picked up at the age of 18 by Northland, for whom he played with Ken and Brian and was soon being talked about as a future All Black.
He was selected to play representative games for North Auckland and New Zealand Maori (now the Maori All Blacks) before making his debut for the full New Zealand team in 1967 in a 29-9 win against Australia.
Quickly supplanting the highly regarded incumbent scrum-half, Chris Laidlaw, whose game was more measured and traditional, Going scored two memorable solo tries in the first half-hour of a 19-12 Test win against France at Eden Park in 1968 and never looked back.
In domestic rugby he became a crowd favourite for Northland and for the New Zealand Maori side, playing for both teams on many occasions with Ken at full-back and Brian at fly-half. From their days in the back garden the trio had devised and memorised a set of 30 moves which they put into action to deadly effect whenever the moment presented itself.
Among the most admired was their triple-scissors movement, involving three scissor passes in succession – from Sid to Brian, Brian to Ken and Ken to Sid – which led to many a try and once inspired a newspaper headline to shout: “Going, Going, Going, Gone”. Although Ken won 24 caps for the All Blacks in tandem with Sid, Brian never made the national side and many felt the selectors missed a trick by not including the three of them in telepathic combination.
Sid’s last Test came against the Lions in 1977, a 9-13 defeat in Christchurch, after which he was appointed OBE. Across his Test career he had scored 10 tries, and in total, when tour matches were included, had played 85 games for the All Blacks.
Among his first tours was a trip in 1970 to South Africa, where the apartheid regime only agreed to accept Going and fellow Māori Bryan Williams on the basis of providing them with “honorary white” status – a humiliating state of affairs that Going none the less accepted without complaint, arguing even many years afterwards that he had just been glad to have the chance to play.
Throughout his career as an amateur, Going – a private man, softly spoken, humble and undemonstrative off the field – had made his living as a farmer. When he retired from top-line rugby in 1978 he continued on the farm, although he also coached a number of secondary school teams from 1988 to 1992 and was selector-coach of Northland from 1993 to 1996. He was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame in 2020.
He and his wife, Colleen, whom he married in 1969, were regular attendees at the New Zealand Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Hamilton, and over the years Sid spent a further two short periods as a missionary.
He is survived by his wife Colleen and their five children.
Sid Going, born August 19 1943, died May 17 2024
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