Excitement machine Grant Batty passes away in Australia

Grant Batty scores his final try, for the All Blacks against the British and Irish Lions in Wellington in June 1977.

Grant Batty, who passed away in Australia late last week aged 74 was the excitement machine of his era.

Batty was a pocket-rocket try-scoring wonder who scored 109 tries in 142 first-class matches in a career cut short by a knee injury aged 25 in 1977. He also scored a staggering 114 tries in three years playing in Greytown’s Kuranui College First XV and he scored and set up countless more in his Wellington club career playing for University and Marist St Pat’s and later in Bay of Plenty.

Batty’s final try in his final appearance was one of his most famous. This was his intercept and runaway playing for the All Blacks here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGLn5UF3SxU

The try won the Test 16-12 on his home ground at Athletic Park in Wellington, but he was forced to pull out of the second Test in Christchurch and retire. He had had an operation on his troublesome knee only four months earlier in the summer following his return from South Africa with the 1976 All Blacks that were captained by Andy Leslie.

In his self titled book with Bob Howitt that was published later that year he wrote:

“We trained at Lincoln College. But it was a waste of time. The knee was sore. Damn sore. I wasn’t going to stand up to an 80-minute game. It would be nice to play another Test, but what if I cocked things up. What if I couldn’t run and it cost New Zealand the game. I’d done my bit in Wellington, helped win a Test, proved I was worthy of selection.

“But not this time. I wasn’t going to let the guys down. So I pulled out and announced my retirement to the press, there and then.”

The inside blurb of this same autobiography summed up his career:

“An 11-stone [70kg] dynamo, he lured tens of thousands of spectators to matches and delighted them with his attacking genius, his audacious tangling with giant forwards, his irrepressible zest for action and for the game of rugby.

“A country boy from tiny Greytown, Batty performed try-scoring feats at college that have probably never been equalled by any player anywhere.

“And his capacity to score tries stayed with him throughout his career. On his first tour as an All Black, to Britain and France with Kirkpatrick’s team in 1972-73, he scored 21 tries, 13 more than any other player on that tour.”

In his second season in the Kuranui College First XV in 1968, Batty once scored nine tries in one match. That was at fullback, but most of his 36 tries that season and the 61 in 1969 were scored as a halfback. In 1969, Batty’s school team won all 20 matches, scoring 811 points and 199 tries and conceding 97 points.

As well as rugby, Batty cleaned up on Kuranui College’s athletics day, winning events from the 100m through to the 800m and the javelin. He was the college diving champion for three years and competed hard in the basketball team despite being height challenged.

He left school and moved to Wellington to start Teachers Training College. Wellington’s clubs got wind of this and he received six letters of introduction from six different clubs. He chose University because he was going to be attending university and because his girlfriend’s brother was in that club’s Senior B team.

Despite his track record at school and his stature being suited to halfback, Batty was selected in University’s Senior A [Premier] squad at second-five.

Then, after just five club matches in his first year out school he played in an All Black trial to select the team to tour South Africa later that year. Reports of the day suggest that if he hadn’t left the field concussed he might have been chosen.

That season was a baptism of fire for the lightweight dynamo, and he was closely marked in club rugby.  He played for Wellington that season, making seven appearances, and played twice for the New Zealand Universities side.

And by the end of 1970 he was chosen as one of the Rugby Almanack’s most promising players for the year.

In 1971, having left Teachers Training College and study behind him to take up a job, he moved across to MSP and played for them for five full seasons between 1971-75, soon moving out to the left wing fulltime where he would make the All Blacks from and go on two overseas tours in 1972/73 and 1976.

He played 58 matches for Wellington between 1970-75, scoring 45 tries and kicking one dropped goal.

Batty moved to BoP for work reasons and played for the Otumoetai Cadets club in 1976 and 1977, but never represented Bay of Plenty.

Batty scored his 100th first-class try whilst playing for Wellington in their 1975 Ranfurly Shield challenge against Auckland that Wellington led 14-13 before a late Auckland try won the game for the holders.

It was at the very start of 1976 that he first injured his knee, in a pre-season charity game. He admitted in his book that he should have immediately had an operation and still make the plane to South Africa with the All Blacks. But he injured it again in his club debut in Tauranga for the Otumoetai Cadets and it was worse.

On the tour of South Africa in 1976 the All Blacks won 18 and lost six of 24 games and lost the Test series 3-1. Batty played in 10 of the matches and all four of the Tests, whilst heavily strapping his knee that was to end his career several months later.

After retiring, Batty won the New Zealand edition of the televised multi-sport competition Superstars for three consecutive years from 1977 to 1979.

He subsequently moved to Australia and remained involved in the game as a coach and manager, including a stint as assistant coach for the Queensland Reds. He also coached in Japan in 2004-05.

Headline photo credit: 14022008/ Photo DON ROY/ Grant Batty in what turned out to be his last test for NZ scores an intercept try at Athletic Park against the 1977 Lions in the first test of the series.Don Roy. Taken from the original photo in the CR photo collection.