The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED "The Evening News, Morning News," The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1938. MINORITIES IN SPORT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 142, 18 June 1938, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED "The Evening News, Morning News," The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1938. MINORITIES IN SPORT.

For the causc that lacks assistance, For the icrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that ice can do.

In this country thought iii leisure time — 'ami not only in leisure time—so often turns to Rugby football that the sport-loving public may have overlooked the significance of the fact that there are now in the Dominion two overseas teams whose members have come long distances to play another game. The English ■women's hockey team is playing 15 matches in the course of a brief visit, and the Indian men's team—the third, incidentally, which has come to Xew Zealand in the last decade —-is now launched on an arduous tour, with a programme of 31 matches. The fact that teams should have come from England and India to play hockey in Xew Zealand says much for the enterprise of those controlling the game i here; it says something, too, for the quality [of Xew Zealand hockey. In all probability most of the teams which are to meet the Indians will be beaten —already the word "uncanny"' is being used to describe the visitors' play —but the Xew Zealand standard is obviously deemed high enough, to make the contests, and the long journey, worth while. And this should be noted by those who— despite Eugby League victories in Australia and the tine contests between Xew Zealand's Soccer team and the English visitors of 1936, are apt to think that the Dominion is proficient at only one game. Competition between the various sports is, up to a point, healthy. It makes for better organisation of all of them, and in so far as it results in rivalry in recruiting boys and men who might otherwise play no game, it is a force for good in the community. The true test of any game is what it does for the player; its attractiveness to the public, as measured in gate receipts, should be a minor consideration. The spirit of intolerant devotion which results in the adherents of one game disparaging, or even placing obstacles in the way of those who play another, has nothing to commend it. There is not much of this spirit in-Xew Zealand, but there is some. There are men, some of them in posts of authority, who contend not only that their game is the best — most of us cherish that irrational sentiment — but that everyone should play it, and that rival games should be discouraged. If they were informed that in a dictatorship country the young men w«re compelled to play one specific game they would consider it just another example of "regimentation," which no democracy would tolerate. But intolerance can flourish in democracies, too, and even in what should be the democracy of sport. This week the spokesmen of one game in Wellington have gone to Ministers of , the Crown to complain that the headmaster of one cf the largest secondary schools is determinedly, and even indignantly, refusing to grant any facilities for the introduction of that game into his school. Such complaints have been made in the past, and in other places, but headmasters should not be harshly or hastily judged simply because of their refusal. They may have very good reasons. It is better to have one or two games in a school well organised than several weakly organised. The personal preferences of the coaching masters are a factor, too, for boys playing any game are not likely to benefit unless the coach has both enthusiasm and knowledge. The test should be the good of the player. But if any substantial number of boys have played one game, and want to go on playing it, they should not be forced to play another. Minorities have rights, in sport as well as in the general community. But this fact should be recognised, and differences amicably reconciled, by sports bodies themselves. It should be as unnecessary as it certainly seems ridiculous to take such a question to the Government^