Sid Going, who has died aged 80, won 29 Test caps as a rugby union scrum-half for the All Blacks between 1967 and 1977, and made 86 appearances in all for New Zealand, captaining them five times. A taciturn man, he was nonetheless fluent in the language of rugby, and was one of the greatest of All Blacks scrum-halves.
Prematurely bald and with a distinctive drooping moustache, Going featured during the 1970s in a fierce rivalry with the world’s leading scrum-half, Gareth Edwards. Like the Welshman he was quick and physically strong – during an era in which any player in the No 9 shirt was at the mercy of marauding back-row forwards if he lacked speed and strength.
