A New Zealander In Tarbes.

My one-time friend and colleague Sandy McNicol played a few games for the All Blacks at prop, on a tour of Britain and France in the long-ago 1970s. He turned professional and played for Tarbes in the south-west about twenty kilometres north of Lourdes. He had three seasons with Stadoceste Tarbais who wore white and looked better thanblack. An agnostic, he surprised me by saying of Lourdes: 'There is something in the air there'. Sandy McNicol left the field on his own terms earlier this year, in care, still an expatriate. -23 October,2018.