ABSTRACT
Although I did not start collecting the data for this project until 1990 the research “journey” really began for me nine years earlier, in 1981. That year my country, New Zealand, was plunged into a state of civil disorder by the arrival of a men’s rugby team representing apartheid in South Africa. This visit contravened an international Commonwealth Heads of Government agreement designed to avert further boycotts of major sporting events (such as the one that occurred at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, when most of the African countries left to protest New Zealand’s presence and our persistent sporting contact with South Africa). The connection between the Montreal Olympics in 1976, rugby in New Zealand in 1981 and my research on tennis in Australia in 1990 may seem obscure, but it goes like this.
