History professor Catsam provides illuminating historical context for recent intersections of sports and political activism in this well-crafted study of the 1981 U.S. tour of South Africa’s national rugby team. The Springboks, who, Catsam writes, “embodied their home country’s white supremacist apartheid policies,” arrived in the U.S. during Ronald Reagan’s first year as president. His administration had adopted a policy of constructive engagement with the apartheid regime, a shift from the approach of Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter. In fact, the invitation from the United States of America Rugby Football Union to the Springboks was sent on the very day of Reagan’s inauguration. But the prior leg of the team’s tour, in New Zealand, was marked by major protests, and concerns about a repetition in the U.S. led to cancelling matches scheduled for Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City, whose match was shifted to Albany, despite efforts to cancel it on public safety grounds that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Through extensive research and interviews—including with members of the team—Catsam assiduously captures how the uproar around the team’s tour primed “the pump of an American anti-Apartheid movement,” ultimately playing a part in the evolution of American policy. This account of an obscure yet impactful moment in history will fascinate sports fans.

Publishers Weekly

Catsam's ardent account of the South African national rugby team’s controversial 1981 tour of New Zealand and the U.S. examines the politicization of sport during the apartheid era. Rugby, like every other part of society in twentieth-century South Africa, was racially segregated. By the late 1970s, anti-apartheid pressure meant that the Springboks national team was effectively banned from international competition. But, with the election of Ronald Reagan, who was politically sympathetic to South African regime, advocates for the Springboks saw an opening and charged into it. Meanwhile, a few rugby organizers belatedly tiptoed toward racial integration, and center Errol Tobias became the first person of color to play a test match as a Springbok. The 1981 international tour would be disrupted by protests, civil disobedience, a court case, and a pipe bomb. But it would also lay the foundation for later international engagement, including South Africa hosting the 2010 World Cup. Informed by conversations with key figures and access to records from the South African Rugby Board, Catsam emphasizes the bureaucratic and social challenges of “rugby diplomacy.” His descriptions of the matches themselves reveal a fan’s love for the sport.

Booklist

Catsam offers an informative, detailed narrative of how the sport of rugby became entangled with the American anti-apartheid movement emerging in the 1970s and 1980s…. Catsam argues well that there are times when sport cannot be separated from politics—allowing the Springboks to play without protest in the US was just as political as condemning them and the Americans who welcomed them. Recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.

Choice Reviews

Lifts the lid on American collaboration with sports apartheid in a valuable collage of rugby, Springboks, and racism.

Peter Hain, leading anti-apartheid campaigner and co-author with André Odendaal of Pitch Battles: Sport, Racism and Resistance

It took four decades for a behind-the-scenes look from an American perspective on the controversial and bloody South African rugby tour of 1981 to New Zealand and the United States. Derek Catsam made it worth the wait.

Heindrich Wyngaard, South African journalist, broadcaster, and author

As a player who was part of the 1981 Springbok rugby team that toured New Zealand and the USA, we as sportsmen wanted to contribute to the game—but in Flashpoint, Derek Catsam provides a complete perspective, including the political views that played out in the background. The role of the anti-apartheid movement in America as well as the foreign policy ofthe time is excellently reproduced.

Theuns Stofberg, former Springbok captain and member of the 1981 Springboks team