Stanley 'Tiny' Hill is adamant that the Maori All Blacks were not asked to throw their 1956 clash with the Springboks © Getty Images

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Stanley 'Tiny' Hill has rejected the claim made by his former Maori team-mate Muru Walters that the team were told not to beat South Africa during the Springboks' tour of New Zealand in 1956.

Walters claimed in an interview yesterday that the then Maori Affairs Minister Ernest Corbett spoke to the side before the game in Auckland and ordered them to throw the game "for the future of rugby" with fears that defeat would lead to future All Blacks sides from being banned from touring South Africa.

According to Walters, who along with other Maori players were excluded from All Black tours to white-controlled South Africa in 1928, 1949 and 1960, said the request from Corbett, "ripped the guts out of the spirits of our team" and they went on to lose the game 37-0.

"What he said was you must not win this game or we will never be invited to South Africa again," said Walters, who played at fullback in the game in question and is now an Anglican bishop. "I thought he was joking, but then another official came in and said the same thing... for the future of rugby, don't beat the South Africans."

However, Hill, who featured at lock on the day in question, has rubbished Walters' claims. "This is news to me. I don't know what the hell is going on," he told The Press. "As far as I was concerned, Ernie Corbett was never in the dressing room at all, because I know him and I come from Taranaki. I don't remember him being there."

Instead, Hill blamed the loss on the fact his side got their tactics wrong. "There was nothing like that at all. We went out there to play the game; we used the wrong tactics on the day. We tried to play it like University the week before ... We never got the ball over the advantage line. They were on attack most of the time and we had to defend most of the time. That was the problem."

Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples, who has previously labelled the New Zealand Rugby Union arrogant for refusing to apologise to former Maori players for excluding them, has expressed his shock at the allegations.

The New Zealand Rugby Union is celebrating the centenary of the first official Maori team later this year and have organised international matches against Ireland and England in June.