16 — Wednesday, June 7, 1995 — North Shore News

From page 43

— demand their share. And usually
get it. Rugby is no eaception. For
instance, if New Zealand Ail-
Blacks win the Webb Ellis Trophy
(the hardware that goes to World
Cup champions), they can expect to
collect about $150,600 a man.

Certainly this flies in the face of
tradition. But then, so does every-
thing else in sport as we approach
the millennium — mid-summer
hockey playoffs; nearly half the
Canadian Football League residing
in the U.S.; player strikes and lock-
outs. And the Don Burgess kicking
tee, which is what we're here to talk

‘about today.) - ;

A high school phys-ed and social
studies teacher in Sidney, just north
of Victoria, Burgess is an old rugby
type who used to do all the kicking
for Oak Bay Wanderers in the
1950s and ‘60s. The old fashioned
way. He'd gouge a small hole in the
turf with his heel and prop the ball,
therein. Or, when that was impossi-
ble, he’d go over to the sidelines for
a supply of sand and prop the ball in
that. It was the same the world over.

-_ After retiring as a player, he was

at Woody’s Lagoon with the family.

' one summer day when a piece of

* styrofoam washed up onto the
beach. Idly carving away at it with a
penknife, he sculpted a flat-bot-
tomed donut. Then it suddenly
occurred to him that a rugby ball
could be balanced inside this piece
of flotsam for kicking purposes.

After making four and practicing
with them, he offered the idea to
rugby officials, who, in a great har-
rumph, told him they wouldn’t hear

Of it. Tradition, old chap.

- He finally sold the idea to a
Victoria friend who had moved to
Toronto to work for the Tetley tea
‘people. They liked it enough, if only
for the play on words, to give him
$4,000 to have some proper molds

' made, ;

one of the world’s leading rugby
nations for the tee to really tee off.
So, four years ago he sent a batch of
5,000 to the New Zealand Rugby
Union. The Kiwis tried them and
loved them. The mother church,
England’s Rugby Football Union,
accepted a similar shipment. It’s
been full speed ahead ever since. In
five years he has distributed 75,000
tees to 17.countries and now has 14
international distributors, all rugby
people. One of them is Aussie star
David Campese, who has so suc-
cessfully marketed himself in the
game’s new look era, he’s now a
millionaire.

The inventor of the tee known as
the Burge and the Tetley claims no

such clevated status at his local
bank. He'll be retiring from his
teaching job in three or four years
and, in anticipation of more spare
time, he's working on another idea
—a rugby ball with finger indenta-
tions. Colored green for the right
hand and red for the left, the grooves
will help the scrum half put the
proper spin on the bail on those
quick, underhand passes to his
backs.

An idea whose time has come?
Why not? While he’s at it, he should
get the idea patented for those small-
er pointy-end balls used in American
and Canadian football. [n no tins: at
all he’d be able to join Campese in
the game's millionaires’ club.

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‘ment with it in club play, he knew he
needed to get the device accepted by

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