Obituary MR A. E. McPHAIL

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28270, 7 May 1957, Page 15

Obituary MR A. E. McPHAIL

New Zealand Rugby lost one of its leading administrators of earlier years with the death yesterday of Mr Alexander Edward McPhail. He was 77.

Mr McPhail began his association with Rugby football as a member of the Sydenham club in 1890, but although he played for the senior team and represented Canterbury in one match in 1902, it was as an administrator that he was best known. He filled administrative positions on the New Zealand and Canterbury unions and with the Sydenham club over many years. At the time of his death he was still a trustee of the Sydenham clubrooms—a project in which he was one of the prime movers. In 1913 Mr McPhail was elected a member of the Canterbury union’s management committee and retained his seat on the Committee until 1917. In 1919 he was re-elected to the committee, and for the next 10 years remained on the union as a committee member and a vice-president. He was elected to the presidency in 1930, and held this post until 1934. The next year he was elected president of the New Zealand union, and was later chosen to be the New Zealand union’s delegate to the Imperial Rugby Conference in London in 1939. The war intervened, however, and he did not make the trip. His association with the Canterbury union continued from 1934, first as immediate past president until 1937, and as a life member from 1938 until his death. As a life member Mr McPhail used to attend meetings of the committee until last year, when his health began to deteriorate. His services to the game in Canterbury have been recognised by the conferring on him of life membership of the Canterbury union, the Sydenham club, and the Victory Park Board of Control, on which he’was a member for several years. Mr McPhail was one of the founders of the leather goods manufacturing and importing firm of McPhail and Fisher, and lived to see the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the firm last month. Mr McPhail’s interest in Rugby has been shared by his family, and two of his sons, Messrs N. J. and C. H. McPhail, are well known in Rugby circles. Both played for Canterbury, and Mr N. J. McPhail was a member of the Kiwi team. Both hold administrative posts on the Canterbury union at the present time— Mr N. J. McPhail as senior forward selector, and Mr C. H. McPhail as the union’s treasurer. He is also survived by his wife, another son, Mr J. L. McPhail, his daughter, June (Mrs M. W. Guthrie), and a son by his second marriage, Mr David McPhail. DR. T. J. F. HUGHES ‘The Press" Special Service AUCKLAND, May 6, Dr. Thomas James Fulcher Hughes, senior medical officer of health in Auckland for many years, has died in Auckland, aged 76. Born in Geraldine, South Canterbury, in 1881, Dr. Hughes was educated at Christchurch Boys’ High School and later at Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities, where he obtained medical degrees.

After holding various posts in hospitals throughout England, he returned to New Zealand in 1912 and took up private practice in Canterbury. In 1913 he was appointed assistant medical officer of health in Auckland and two years later became senior medical officer for the district. In 1945 he was appointed the representative of the Director-General of Health on the Auckland Metropolitan Milk Board. Dr. Hughes resigned in 1946. He was closely associated with the health camp and leper relief movements.

He is survived by his wife and daughter.