MORE RUGBY UNIONISMS.

NZ Truth, Issue 59, 4 August 1906, Page 5

MORE RUGBY UNIONISMS.

TOMMY liUNTER ON ECONOMY.

Likes the Cheap and Nasty, and Deprecates Advertising ;

Except When it is Free and Boosting His Mental Science Soliloquies.

It would really be interesting to know what are the qualifications of some of the members of the ■Wellington Rugby, Union for the position they have attained on the Union committee and what m nature induced any sane footballers to put them there. If it was floods of eloquence that the members , needed and reckoned they'd found, when little Tommy Hunter was elected, then those who put him on the committee must, if they are not devoid of all 1 reasonable understanding, be by now painfully undeceived. For Tommy's "eloquence" has been discovered to be mere fluting, dreary verbiage and ghastly gasconasde— "sound and fury signifying nothing," m fact— and all who are fated to endure his wordy flood suffer acutely and have long since discovered that Tommy simply uses the meetings of the Union as a sort of practice for his oratorical powers. He is dead struck on his own voice and thinks himself a: Semprpnius of sounding, syllabic symbols and a Demosthenes of debate. And this little Professor of Mental Science at Victoria College, has some truly Scotch ideas as to what constitutes economy arid what .waste. It is not waste for a newspaper to give lengthy accounts of Hunter's lectures, or to devote space to the announcement that Hunter has had a rise m his screw of £100 a year ; but it is shameful waste for the Rugby Union to spend money m judicious advertising. Members like Messrs Harry Mclntyre and Sam Brown, being . thoroughly trained business men* of course know nothing as to how sweet are the uses of advertisement ; but this nawky little Scotch professor of an abstract science, a mere student transfigured into a schoolmaster, naturally knows all about it and pooh-poohs the advocacy of practical men that anything reouires advertising. At the last meeting of the Union "Professor" Hunter upreared himself on his hind legs to shoot his mouth once more. It seems he can't help it, it is constitutional and his fellow committeemen try to suffer m silence as far as it is m human nature to bear the infliction. This time it wasi to gird at members who had ordered a few posters to advertise a match and to vent his opinion— his, the learned professor of. mental science— that all advertising was a waste of quid bawbees. He said the funds of the Union were depleted and that it was folly to waste money on advertising either m newspapers or on a hoarding ; and he was moved to give -an instance of canny Scotch management upon an occasion at Dunedin last year wlien the whole advertising account of a bis match amounted to only sixteen shillings. Hunter was on the management committee on that occasion and he knew all about' it. He was most unhappy m his choice of an instance to point his moral and adorn his tale ; for several gentlemen present could recall the occasion and the fact, freely stated and acknowledged at the time, that, just for lack of proper advertising that match —it was one between the North and the South Islands— cost the New Zealand Rugby Union a heavy loss. The public knew nothing about it. The affair was not advertised, so how should it ? So that all who attended were the few ardent followers of and participants m the game. The public stayed away and probably did not know such a match had eventuated. And thus, through the gross mismanagement, and paltry penuriousness of the Otago Union the parent body was mulcted m a heavy expense. So much for Tommy Hunter's ideas and the instance by which he sought to support them. If he is so concerned about the attenuated funds why not subsidise them with say, a tenner out of the recently achieved extra century ? Before leaving the subject of the Union meeting it may be as well to state that cases have transpired which go to show that beside the junior players' language and performances, the alleged riotousness .at the Athletic Park, of the seniors, Dales into shrinking insignificance. Prbfessor Hunter and a few more ardent reformers might with advantage take a run round among the juniors for a week or two..