Newspaper Article 1999 – Lifestyle key to Reid’s longevity

Lifestyle key to Reid’s longevity

Tori Reid, at 87 the third-oldest living All Black, puts his longevity down to resisting the traditional after match beer and a cigarette which was part of the game more than 60 years ago.

Bridge Pa resident Reid, the veteran of 157 first-class matches including 81 for Hawke’s Bay, also believes in the need for a good doctor.

His father raised Reid as a teetotaller and a non smoker, a trait which Tori has passed down to his own family.

On the 1935-36 Tour to Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales his team-mates found out how much the lifetime decision not to drink meant to him.

An All Black held each limb down with one opening his mouth and another goodnaturedly tried to force a drink into Reid. Reid, weighing around 100kg at the time, struggled and managed to hurl the five internationals off him.

“I just said to them ‘never do that again my good friends’ and they didn’t, they respected my choice,” Reid said.

“My father taught our family that our bodies were sacred and I think it’s something to remember.”

The All Black lock, who played 27 international matches and 9 tests from 1935-37, team morale was always high then but some after match functions on the home nations tour were too much for him.

Smoking was part of the culture then and cigar smoke was hard on Reid’s lungs.

“A lot of the time I just had to vacate myself outside.

“There was always this haze that came down from the ceiling gradually as the night got later.”

Reid also believes his fitness regime as a younger player held him in good stead for later life. He represented the All Blacks as a nineteen year old and as training he ran eight miles a day followed by 500m in the pool. When start of tour fitness testing came along the six foot two lock-flanker was regularly the most well prepared.

Reid played first class rugby until nearly 40 and his total of 157 first-class games at the time was the most ever.

But it’s the need for a good doctor which will probably save the most pain, he said.

Reid had problems with his ears throughout his rugby career, and in a bid to stave off cauliflower ears had his ears drained of blood and fluid regularly by doctors.

“I didn’t want a pair of ears like Buck Shelford, I didn’t want to look like that. But once I went to a doctor in Napier called Dr Fitzgerald who I class as a horse doctor after he put the needle right through my ear.”

His ears were aggravated in a scrum for Hawke’s Bay against Canterbury for the Ranfurly Shield in 1934 by a foreign object in the pocket of a team-mate.

Reid packed down and felt something grate at his ear. He unbound and asked his fellow Hawke’s Bay representative what he had in his pocket.

“He got up and pulled a sugarcube from his shorts and said ‘Sorry Tori, I didn’t realise I’d left that in there’ and I was back with this nice lady doctor who lanced my ear for me at the end of the game.”

Reid is still in the best of health now is that [although] he wears hearing aids and has nerve damage in his left eye due to collecting a knee in the head during his playing days.

Photo captions –

New Zealand’s third-oldest surviving All Black Tori Reid wearing his 1935 All Black cap and surrounded by jerseys and programmes from his playing days.