BOWLING.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 135, 9 June 1926, Page 14

BOWLING.

THE QUESTION OF BYES.

DISCUSSED IN DUNEDIN.

(By TRUNDLER.)

A correspondent in Dunedin, who, in a very interesting and thoughtful let- : ter, describes himself as "club ties controller in a large club," has reopened the question as to whether the Auckland tournament committee acted correctly at Easter, when they drew for the bye in the semi-final with only two names in the hat, although each of the three remaining teams had already had a bye. He agrees with this decision, "seeing no regulations were in existence regarding the byes," but this clause takes away the whole value of his opinion, for it is evidently based on incomplete information, which he states that he obtained from the "Otago Daily Timee." Apparently this well-known journal was not in possession ol all the facts, for nothing could be clearer than the regulations in black and white, upon which the committee were acting. Probably he would have expressed quite a different opinion if he had known that the rule is most emphatic, beyond any question of evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation, if one may borrow the picturesque phraseology which is used in another place to make a statement explicit. It reads as follows: —"Byes required at any later stage of the intersectional play shall be ballotted for, but no team shall have more than one bye unless this is unavoidable." In this case all three had already had a bye, and therefore the last provision did not apply, the first clause governing the position in its entirety. All three names should therefore have gone into the hat.

The critic states that "the decision to make the team which held the bye in the immediate preceding round play in the succeeding round was a right one," but this ie purely a matter of opinion, whereas tournaments must be run on rules. As a matter of fact, some people evidently consider that there is nothing at all outrageous in a team getting two byes in succession, for this is specifically allowed in Dunedin, in a set of rules governing the two-life system in the critic's own centre. Two of these rules describe contingencies which almost exactly coincide with the position in Auckland at Easter, and both say that "a draw for the bye shall be made," while one makes it even clearer by adding "even though two successive byes are obtained." In Wellington at Christmas a team got two byes in succession, in a "sudden death" intersection play, where a bye is of even more value than under the two-life system, while at Cambridge at Easter, at the very time that the Auckland rule was being broken, in orjer to prevent a team getting a chance to get the two byes in succession, to which chance they were clearly entitled by the rules, one team actually got three byes in sucession! And unless Wellington alter their rules the same thing will happen there one of these days. The Rules Used in Auckland. However, in Auckland we are not concerned with the rules of Cambridge, Wellington or Dunedin. The only rules we accept are our own rules, although two ye&rs previously, at the Easter tournament of 1924, the tournament committee created a precedent by acting on the Dominion rules when our own rules were considered not very clear on a certain point. As a bowling centre, the only rules we recognise for our centre tournaments are those which are revised each year, and printed in the Christmas programme. Those are the rules which were automatically applied in the pairs championship last year, when the unanimous request of the competitors changed sudden death to the two-life, and they were used in the champion of champions a fortnight later. This year they were again used in both these tournaments, although no special copies were printed, and when at Easter the unanimous wish of the competitors again changed sudden death to the two-life, these rules automatically became operative. It would be most inconsistent, and absolutely absurd, to accept the suggestion made here at Easter that some new rules could be suddenly manufactured, differing from those printed last December, and already used three times. The Personal Point of View The critic continues: "Byes in the twolife system are a bugbear to controllers. They invariably cause some friction . because each person views the question from his own point of view." That is not the experience in Auckland, where we care nothing for people's personal point of view. All we are concerned about is the rule, and when the rule is faithfully and impartially administered there ha s never yet been a quibble, for all support the committee. The present conflict was between the strict interpretation of a rule in the plainest of plain English, and the tendency to waive it when circumstances arise which somebody did not foresee.

Nobody questions the bona fides of the committee; no doubt they acted in accordance with what they thought was right, and the executive could not very well avoid supporting them after delegating to them all their powers. Their error of judgment, however, caused an injustice to a team i n a very similar way to what was attempted last November, when some people unthinkingly claimed that the rule in the four-rink championship should be altered as they went along. A fairly safe rule in all tournaments is this: When in doubt stick to the exact letter of the rule, and then nobody can possibly question it. Wnat shakes people's confidence in a committee i a inconsistency, as, for instance, at Christmas of 1924 when they disqualified a team because they thought" they had played a substitute without permission, whereas at Easter of 1926 exeryone "knew" that a team had done this and no action was taken. Then on Easter Saturday of 1924 a substitute was not allowed to skip, in terms of the Dominion rule, while on Easter Saturday of 1926 the substitute not only came in as skip, but won his section and was allowed to play at Carlton! And, in addition to ail this, the committee went contrary to their own rule, which says that the bye had to go "by ballot*" As play was impossible on King's Birthday, Epsom have postponed their tournament till next Saturday. Mount Albert have decided to utilise two Saturday afternoons, June 12 and 19, to take the place of King's Birthday, and play will commence each afternoon at 1.30.