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• Published date: 04 August 2021

IT came to a head on the motorway.

More than a thousand marchers on one side, strong in their beliefs and language.

They were young and old, male and female, experienced protesters and first-time marchers.

On the other side was the thin blue line, police officers handpicked to stop an emotional powder keg from igniting.

There was anger as the two groups collided, and cries of ‘‘traitor’’ hurled at the officers. Later a protester would be attacked by rugby fans.

At nearby Carisbrook, a different conflict was playing out, this time between 30 men on the paddock.

They were unfamiliar scenes in Dunedin; the 1981 Springboks tour upended a lot of things.

Tough gig

Allan Grindell was a 23-year-old constable in Dunedin in 1981.

He loved his footy, played for Kaikorai, and didn’t really get what all the fuss was about.

He was of the view, as many were, that politics and sport shouldn’t mix.

So when he was picked for the Blue Squad, a team of police working on the controversial Springbok tour of New Zealand that year, he was chuffed.

The Blue Squad was a group of 54 officers from Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin who would travel with the Springboks, getting them safely to and from games, hotels, and events along the way.

Anti-tour sentiment had been building for months.

The divisions were political, racial, town against country.

Protests attracted thousands of marchers around the country, who in turn were angrily confronted by pro-tour advocates.

Const Grindell had been part of Dunedin’s team policing squad, which was trained to deal with crowd control and mass disorder incidents.

But this would be a step up.

‘‘We were all very excited about it, at that stage,’’ the now 63-year-old said.

‘‘We knew there would be some reasonably heavy demonstrations, but I don’t think any of the guys that I worked with really envisaged what was going to happen.’’

That started to become clear when the Hamilton match was called off on July 25 over security fears.

He recalls being booed at the City Hotel pub in Moray Pl that night, because it was the police commissioner who had nixed the game.

His first taste of the South on tour was Invercargill, where the Boks played Southland on August 8.

The visit was uneventful, other than the hosts going down 22-6. So uneventful, in fact, that the team decided to stay in the city for several nights longer than they had planned.

‘‘Invercargill was seen as very pro-rugby. They decided it was a safe venue,’’ Mr Grindell said.

‘‘I think we had a...