CHARGE AGAINST FOOTBALLERS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 205, 30 August 1910, Page 5

CHARGE AGAINST FOOTBALLERS.

HOTELKEEPER'S ALLEGATIONS

RESULT OF UNION INQUIRY.

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

PALMERSTON NORTH, Monday

At the Manawatu Rugby Union meeting to-night the president reported having been present with Mr. Ongley, captain of the Manawatu team, at an inquiry held by the Taranaki Union into a hotelkeeper's charges at Hawera against the Manawatu players. Taranaki was inquiring because it was discovered, after the charges were made, that a number of the Taranaki team and representative Taranaki citizens were also occupants of the room that night. The evidence of the hotelkeeper's witnesses showed that the porter reported to him after the Manawatu team had left that the beds and rooms were in a pretty condition. Several witnesses testified to being shown this subsequently toy the porter in the hotel, but the only witness who connected the occupants of the room with it in any way was the porter, who said that he iad been aware of the dirty condition of the room, in which he also slept, at 3 a.m., also-at other hours in the morning, 'but never informed the landlord till after the team had left. He admitted calling after a team that they had not left money for him, and that it subsequently transpired that members of the team had promised .him tips, which they had not paid. The evidence of the porter was contradicted in essential points by other -witnesses, and iby all the witnesses heard toy the Manawatu Union at Levin, Palmers ton and Feilding, including men outside the- team, who had established that they had turned over the bedding in searching for mining fancy braces, etc., just before the team I left, and that the bedding was then in clean condition, while it was admitted by the landlord's witnesses to have been impossible that the searchers could have failed to see the condition of the mattresses if they 'had been when the search was made ac they were found to be after the .team had gone. The evidence of Levin, Feilding, and Palmerston men and other independent witnesses was corro-' borated by the evidence of Milne, Mynott, McLeod, and Stohr, of Taranaki, whose evidence the Taranaki Union had taken, and all of whom cleared the Manawatu and other occupants of the room from the charges made. The Taranaki Union was continuing its inquiry, and was to take the evidence of W. Slattery tend Livingstone, well-known Taranaki residents, who were also in the room. The president's report stated that he was quite satisfied from the evidence that the conditions discovered later did not exist when the Manawatu and Taranaki men left the premises. The room was a sample room outside the hotel yard, with temporary mattresses, on which a number of the Taranaki men and six Manawatu men slept. The Manawatu Union decided to accept a retraction telegraphed 'by the Press Association, but to' go on with the matter against the Hawera "Star," which had reiterated the allegations, and the hotelkeeper, leaving the matters till the Taranaki Union concluded its investigation.