36,000 ATTEND SHIELD GAME

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27441, 30 August 1954, Page 10

36,000 ATTEND SHIELD GAME

QUEUES FORM BEFORE GATES OPEN

WAIKATO SUPPORTERS IN CHEERFUL GROUP

The Waikato Rugby enthusiasts who travelled so many hundreds of miles to see Saturday’s Ranfurly Shield match must have found Christchurch a pleasant place on so lovely a day, but they themselves contributed in large measure to the success of the occasion. Most of them had seats together at the south end of the ground, and it was quite the most colourful corner of Lancaster Park. If they were noisy they were good-natured, and at the end they took their team’s failure in the most sporting manner.

The official estimate of Saturday’s crowd was 36,000, and that would appear to be a safe assessment. All the familiar characteristics of Lancaster Park on a special day were early recognisable—the caterers busy about the approaches to the ground,' the queues outside the gates before they were opened—at 10.15 a.m. there were three queues, each some 50 yards long —the lunch baskets, the flasks, the animated conversation, and the eager step of the early arrivals.

In the city, the hotels all seemed to be full in the morning, and in the early afternoon much of this brisk trade was transferred to the taxi drivers, another group which must be among Canterbury’s most earnest supporters. The parking of cars and the directing of traffic are a tremendous job for the City Council’s traffic officers, and on Saturday they had to work again over a very wide area. Restaurateurs will notice the difference when Canterbury loses the shield: they did a brisk trade before and after the match. Good-Humoured Crowd Inside the park, it was always a good-humoured crowd, with the Waikato contingent providing most of the levity inseparable nowadays from a shield fixture. Many of them were in fancy dress, nearly all of them wore berets and skull caps in Waikato’s red, black, and yellow, and a fair number brought with them the coxybells that offered an effective reminder of the province’s other occupation. On the oval, a pair of contented cows fed, mainly on public approval. One of these eccentric animals performed a little danep with the two ends showing commendable co-ordina-tion; the other felt the heat earlier and had to •be protected from the sun with a shade. There was an energetic gentleman, clad from head to foot in stripes «f red and black, with a chimney pot hat in corresponding colours. Behind him he drew a very real but very reluctant Canterbury lamb. How the cowbells rang when the lamb sat’ down and refused to go on when it was under the «losest observation from the Waikato section of the crowd. There was, too, a Waikato dignitary adorned with the flowing black moustache of a happier and simpler era, carrying a brightlycoloured sunshade in one hand and a crayfish in the other. One of his cohorts amused his audience by reproducing with extraordinary accuracy a cow’s mooing, using only an empty glass. Many Visitors From South Not all the visitors were from Waikato. There were many from the south, including a few from Dunedin who assessed the merits of the play on tile basis that anything Waikato could do, Otago do better. There was at least one party from Kaikoura, well equipped with cushions, crayfish, and refreshment from containers varying greatly in size and colour. A few minutes before the teams came on to the field, the park looked really full. Before the crowded stands hundreds were on the box and plank seating, and in front of them hundreds more were seated in colourful ranks on the grass. Not all of them had won admission in the formal way, for with such a rush of business the park staff could not stop all the holes, and some came in rapidly and cheaply, in such places as the bicycle park near the gates. On the embankment, there was a solid mass, and clouds of smoke floated away on the easterly breeze, as if from a scrub fire on a hillside. ■ The morning procession was watched by many thousands of persons, who enjoyed a colourful collection of floats and bands and teams of marching girls in spring sunshine. There were some bright remarks, some repetitive, and the procession included a good many cars carrying happy Waikato supporters.