WRESTLING

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27307, 25 March 1954, Page 7

WRESTLING

DOMINION UNION MEETS

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 24. • A revitalisation of amateur wrestling in New Zealand was predicted at the annual meeting today of the Dominion Wrestling Union as a consequence of the work done by the amateur advisory committee set up by the union a year ago under the chairmanship of Mr L. Woods. The advisory committee today recommended the establishment this year of an amateur committee, and the union approved the recommendation. The aim of the amateur committee, said Mr Woods, would be to become the virtual governing body of amateur wrestling in the country under the jurisdiction of the union. Its duties would be to organise the annual New Zealand wrestling championships, arrange tours of amateur wrestling teams in this country and abroad, select New Zealand teams, organise coaching and coaching schools, raise finance for amateur wrestling, and generally to do all that was desirable to promote and control amateur wrestling. An amateur conference was to be held every year at the annual championships, said Mr Woods, and at the next championships in Invercargill the first amateur committee would be elected. Associations would be invited to send two delegates each to the conferences. An amateur judicial panel, consisting of the present panel of referees and judges, would be formed, and this would appoint panels of provincial referees and provincial judges and generally assume over-riding control of the running of aU amateur bouts. Associations would also be asked to appoint their own amateur sub-commit-tees, which would work under the amateur committee of the union. Officers elected were: —patron, the Prime Minister (Mr Holland); president, Mr R. Barker (Otago); vice-presidents, Messrs A. Muller (Wanganui), J. Fairclough (Napier), G. Watchorn (Palmerston North), H. Ashley (Auckland), T. Smale (Gisborne), H. O. Apperley (HaWke’s Bay), A. Craig (Christchurch), and R. Booker (Christchurch); executive committee, Messrs E. Lynneberg, J. R. Hughes, R. V. Scrimgeour, H. H. Sterling, J. McCready, and J. W. Steel; delegates to the Olympic and British Empire Games Association, Messrs E. Lynneberg, J. R. Hughes, and L. Woods. Mr J. W. Steel (Wellington), the retiring president, was elected the union’s first life member.