RUGBY FOOTBALL.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 162, 11 July 1925, Page 25

RUGBY FOOTBALL.

NOTES AND COMMENTS. The Te Aute team which play ad New Plymouth Boys' High School recently, nnd won, is a weighty proposition for schoolboys. Th- backs averaged list 6£lb, anil the forwards 12st 12ilb. Quentin Donald, the All Black, has just been discharged from hospital at Masterton, where he was treated for a severe attack of pneumonia. His doctor has forbidden him to play for a month at least. A Rugby "find" in South Canterbury this year is a 10-year-old Maori named Teraki. Ho weighs "lost, but is very fast, a deadly tackier and one of tbe best in the Zingari first-grade team, lie is one of the keenest players in any part of Canterbury, and with the Zingari halfback, Gibb, he "hikes" in to Timaru from Paeroa each practice night —a distance of eight miles. Ces Badeley was in Palmerston North the other day, and at the invitation of the headmaster of the Central School,, ho paid a visit to the school and talked to the boys about the All Black tour in Britain, after which he gave a short lecture, with blackboard drawings, on Rugby tactics, and spent a quarter of an hour with the forwards in a practical lesson on packing a scrum. In commenting on the All Blacks recently in Australia, the Sydney papers pick out Finlayson as the only player up to the at full-back is considered good enough standard of the 1924 team, though Harris for any international side- • Discussion of the subject of a tour of a Maori football team to England and France took place at a meeting of influential members of the Maori race held in Napier on Thursday evening. Sir Maui Pomare, Minister of Health, and the Hon. A. T. Ngata, M.P., were amongst those present. It was unanimously decided that a tour to France especially would be opportune, and an invitation for 192G is to be asked through the New Zealand Rugby Union. Members present were very optimistic over the matter of finance and the -whole question of the tour will be discussed at the meeting of the Maori Advisory Board at Wellington. As a young man, Mr. A. E. Whyte !(who died in Wellington last week) represented .the Auckland province on the football field. He was for many years a prominent golfer, and was, at one time, well known in South Island cricket circles. His death will be deeply regretted by a host of friends throughout the Dominion, and many messages of sympathy have been given his wife and family. 'If you watch a series of first-class Rugby matches played, and concentrate when doing so, your attention on the subject of tactics —attacking tactics in particular —you may be forgiven if you come to the conclusion that little or no confidence is now placed by the j players in the effectiveness of bouts of j hand-to-hand passing in the back divi-1 eion (writes Colonel Philip Trevor,! C.B.E. "in the London "Daily Tele- j graph"). Anyhow, 1 could give a list: of stand-off half-backs and centre three- j quarter backs who automatically resort | to kicking even at the beginning of a game directly they got hold of the ball. They do so even they have taken evidence of the capacity of their own threequarter line to handle the ball accurately ■ —I am assuming a fine afternoon and a. dry ground—or the capacity of the opposing back division to deal with bouts of hand-to-hand passing instituted against them or to counter them. We know that when the four threequarter back system was first introduced it made but little headway in Wales, and practically none in England. But improvement camo by degrees. It was, of course, realised that to run nearly at right angles to the touch line and to pass the ball to your nearest comrade when approached by an opponent merely transferred the play from one side of the field to the other. It gained practically no ground, and it had the disadvantage of tiring your forwards to no purpose. In course of time, however, the stand-off half-back became the pivot of the attacking game, and the centre three-quarter backs were, like ibim, made to realise that they were not to pass the ball automatically. DummyBelling, side-stepping, and swerving were used with effect, and the return pass became a recognised manoeuvre. We were indeed making scientific headway with a thing that was more or less forced upon us when the era—l would almost call it tbe epidemic—of oblique punting the ball came in. For many seasons past I have been making observations in this matter, and I have come to tlie conclusion that we Oiave not nearly exploited the possibilities of hand-to-hand passing. What that sort of thing is capable of effecting the New Zealanders have recently shown us. Yet, lest it should be retorted that the New Zealanders are a law unto themselves, I will take a home illustration. Last season four undergraduates of Oxford University were chosen to form the Scottish three-quarter line in the team selected to play against Wales at Edinburgh, and what they did in conjunction there is a matter of history. That line was always scoring, and a tremendous victory for the Scots was the result. I did my best at the time to describe in tho "Daily Telegraph" the play seen in that match, and I ventured to draw what seemed to mc to be the obvious moral of it. Subjective controversy conducted decently and in order is more than permissible; it is actually health-giving, and the moral which I drew was not the moral which was drawn by others whose opinions are entitled to great respect. I contend that attack by means of the oblique kick is, at best, a secondary and subsidiary form of attack, and is to be commended only in certain conditions, though as an alternative, by way of masking the real attack, it also has its uses. If you find (I am assuming your are a stand-off half-back) that your centre threequarters are ineffective—perhaps they are too slow or they are fumbling, or they are too well marked—then by all means fly the kicking kite; for it is sheer kite-flying. Still, on a dry day, ought not the men in your thhreequarter line first to have their chance of hand-to-hand work, even if your general knowledge of their capacities inclines you, without debate to pass a vote of no confidence in them? One docs not, however, like that kind of voting. They should be given the opportunity to state theii ease.

The fact that there are fewer good amateurs about just now than has been the case in recent years has been a topic of conversation among Auckland enthusiasts during tho past week or two. Old-timers remind one that amateurs usually come in cycles; one year there will be quite a crop of promising young boxers, and tho following year scarcely a new face will be seen in tho ring. This is very true, but anyone in touch with the local gymnasiums knows full weU that, for a city with a population of over 170,000, Auckland has too few good amateurs. Of course, it should not be overlooked that much good material is to be found in the colleges. Year by year the College of the Sacred Heart, Richmond, turns out somo splendid boys, well-trained and physically fit. Their annual" championship meeting is invariably a success. The same may bo said of King's College, where a high standard is maintained. Few, if any, of these boys aro seen in the Town Hall ring, since it is not the policy of the college authorities to encourage public performances. In some ways this is a pity, since a boy of rare qualities might be lost to the game in this way. An organisation that is doing much to foster amateur boxing is the Auckland Military Sports Association, which body '. holds an annual tournament that has been productive of promising material! jlt is to be hoped that the N.B.A. will remain true to its principles, and, in the event of a continued diminution in the number of amateurs offering, make somo special endeavour to foster the game. It has been laid to the charge of a southern association that too little encouragement is given to the amateur boxer; may Auckland never fail in this respect. Two years ago, Jimmy Allen, Purdy's opponent of Saturday night last, won the bantam-weight division of a tournament held at Balmain. His bout with Purdy was described as "tbe reward of his steady progress." During his clamber up the ladder of success, Allen outpointed the brilliant George Walters, over 10 rounds, won a string of midweek 15- rounders, stopped Curley Hinks, the tough Brisbane boy, and lately ! fought a draw with Tenario Pelkey. If j (as was claimed for him in Auckland i recently) he ever defeated Bert Spargo, ! it is very strange that a prominent AusI tralian writer omits to mention the fact jin a review of his performances. ! Stadiums, Ltd., have commissioned j Mr. Frank P. Brown to tour America, i England and the Continent in search of j talent. Mr. Brown, under the penI name of "The Count," has conducted the boxing and wrestling sections of "The Sporting Globe" (Melbourne) since its inception. For the past three years he has been an outstanding figure in the 1 Australian boxing world. The wonderfh . revival of wrestling in the Commonwealth was largely due to his enthusiasm. Mr. Brown has been given an absolutely free hand in the choice of boxers and wrestlers to visit Australia.