Bobby Black (rugby union)
Robert Stanley Black was a New Zealand rugby union player. A first five-eighth, Black represented Otago and Buller at a provincial level, and was a member of the New Zealand national side, selected for the All Blacks, on their 1914 tour of Australia whilst representing the Otago province.
He played in six of the matches on tour including the first test and scored three tries. Working as a clerk in the Bank of New South Wales, Bobby was posted, on his return from Sydney, to Westport where he played two games for Buller in September. He was back in Dunedin in 1915 but Pirates did not field a team in the senior championship so he transferred to the University of Otago club and played twice for Otago.
Black enlisted in the Otago Mounted Rifles in November 1915 and, after transferring to the Canterbury Regiment, saw active service in the Battle of the Somme. He was killed in action on 21 September 1916, and he was memorialised on the Caterpillar Valley Memorial, which commemorates over 1200 New Zealand soldiers who died in the Battles of the Somme in 1916 for whom there is no known grave, although his body was subsequently identified and buried.
