FOOTBALL.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 12, 14 January 1905, Page 12

FOOTBALL.

From the businesslike way in whiehi the English Association Football Association is taking the matter in hand, there seems to be. some probabiiiy of an English Association team paying the Australasian colonies a visit next sea« sou. ]Ur ('. 0. Dacip, of Auckland, whoi approached (he English Association, Uaa been informed that tho proposal was referred to a commission to consider and report. The gentlemen comprising the commission are Lord Kinnaird (Old Etonians), Messrs C. W. Akock (014 Harrovians). It. S. Sherrington (Suffolk F.C.), and D. T?. Wwlfall (Lanes F.C.). Tho New Zealand and New South W r ales Football Associations have been requested to furnish a plaa of an itinerary and an estimate of the probable guarantees which could bo furnished.

j A. O. Jones, the well-known footballee ] and cricketer, discusses in the "Daily; j Mail" a matter which may in some meai sure account for the fact that Rugby is j not moving ahead in England as rapidly, as its supporters would wish. He says:: For some years now the so-called Rugby; County Championship lias been a farce, Ernd the sooner it is established on a sounder and fairer basis the better for Rugby football. All the matches are played in mid-week, and generally mean long journeys, so that most players, who can usually get off only one day in tha week, prefer to give their own club tho benefit of their services. The consequence is (particularly when the match is away, from home) that the county teams are practically composed of reserves, most of whom have no pretensions to play in first-class football. In the Midland Counties I have known as many as eight or nine reserves play. It is this difficulty to obtain representative teams that has caused all the trouble, and whereas every man playing is supposed to have a birth or six: months' residential qualification, no inquiry is ever and so in order to win this '"county championship" tho services are enlisted of well-known Scottish, Irish and Welsh players—if tho latter, so much the better. And yet all these matches are supposed to be English international trials, and are attended by tho selection committee. When we come to the selection of an international team we lind two men playing together, one from the North and the other from the South, who perhaps have never seen one another before, and whose style of play is utterly different. If the selection committee, would leave these county matches (as at present played) and attend more club matches (as is done in Wales) tJiey would most certainly find players whose styles were suited to one another, and in international matches we should see some combination, which for many years has been missing, and which is so essential to winning matches.