FOOTBALL "GLADIATORS."

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 148, 23 June 1923, Page 11

FOOTBALL "GLADIATORS."

IN HIGH SCHOOL MATCHES. OBJECTIONS TO PLAY OX PUBLIC PARK. (Special to "Star.") CHRISTCHURCH, this day. The approach of the annual match between Christ's College and the Boys' High School, which is regarded by many followers of the game as the best mutch of the season, gives interest to a letter which the Rev. E. C. Crosse (headmaster of Christ's College) has just written to Mr. Lancaster, of the High School, in which the whole question of school matches being played in public is raised, Following are important passages of tha communication: I "In agreeing, as I have done, to your request to play the first College High School match this year on tho Lancaster Park ground, I think it is only right I should safeguard myself against any possible misrepresentation of my action. Every year that this match is played on Lancaster Park ground it becomes harder to break the tradition. I think I the public have already forgotten the ■ fact that the match only became established at Lancaster Park as a war time charity. The two years which i have now elapsed since first I expressed disapproval of these public performances, so far from having altered my opinion, have merely confirmed it, and, .by agreeing to play this match at Lanj caster Park, I am not in any sort of I way tieing my hands for the future. I quite admit the desirability of providing accommodation at these matches for those who are closely associated with either of the two schools, but 1 do not admit the desirability of schoolboys being used as gladiators for the amusement of the outside public. My opposition is based by no means simply on the encouragement which these public matches afford to players to play to the gallery. I think the whole tendency in this country is for football of the first fifteens of the greater schools to assume far too prominent a place in the life of the schools as a whole. No one who knows mc can justifiably accuse mc of being in any way opposed to football, as any Christ's College boy would tell you. I have laboured my hardest to improve the football of the school, not simply the football of the Srst fifteen, but of every boy who plays the game, which at Christ's College means every boy except those who are physically unfit. Concentration of public interest on spectacular performances of the first XV. seems to mc not merely to encourage the first XV. in an utterly false idea that football is the most important thing of the school, but it creates an underlying impression in the minds of those boys who do not happen to be gifted with great ability lin this direction that they arc in a general way of little use. "I despair of eradicating this false impression in the boys' minds if these I Ing football matches beforo vast crowds are to become part of the normal routine of the school life. The excite- [ ment which they engender is too intense to give a boy a fair chance. This is the main basis of my opposition to continuing to play College Hiah School matches on Lancaster Park." Mr. I Crosse refers also to two other eecondary reasons, tho first being his objection to the betting that goes on in the town on the result of this ! match. "I think," he says, "we are ' under an obligation to the boys to protect them from this. Secondly, tlioueh iit has been the case in the past that the College Hieh School match has until now provided the best exhibition lof schoolboy football in the neighbourhood, this is no loneer necessarily the case. This year Stijifeedes have already beaten both college and hijjh school, I and unless either of us can reverse this result in the second round of the competii tion, neither will b e able to claim the honour of being the leading team in the competition." When asked to express an opinion on Ith* above letter Mr. Lancaster said: j "We are not committed to Lancaster Park at all; we merely wish to give the old boys and their friends of both schools the best possible opportunity of seeing the match." He preferred not to discuss the matter further.