“RESULTS ARE EVERYTHING"

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28973, 14 August 1959, Page 25

“RESULTS ARE EVERYTHING"

Comment By N.Z. Colts’ Coach (New Zealand Press Association) . NEW PLYMOUTH. August 13. Rugby was a players’ game first, second, third and all the time, and what the public thought about it did not matter, said Mr J J. Stewart,. coach of the New Plymouth Boys’ High School first fifteen, when asked to comment on the article published in the Cape Town newspaper “Die Burger." Mr Stewart, who was coach of the New Zealand Colts’ team in Ceylon in 1955. said he disagreed completely with the writer’s opinion that attractive Rugby was more important than match results.

Players should have the right to adopt whatever tactics they felt would win. and not play to provide the public with a spec-' taele. They were not professional entertainers, he said. The result did not matter at the final whistle because there was nothing anyone could do about it then, but until the final whistle the result was I everything. The paradox was that as soon as Rugby started to be concerned with its appeal to the public—consciously striving to entertain —it would lose all its entertainment value, said Mr Stewart. Responsibility of Press

If there was any “unpleasant aftermath” it was all caused by the press, he said. He had never met any players or officials who felt such an "aftermath.”

Rugby journalism had reached the stage where the writers were not considered “tops” unless they

continually attacked something fresh and were derogatory. Selectors had always been “fair game,’’ but they had now become more than that. They were attacked in newspapers at all levels by journalists, most of whom had seen about 2 per cent of the .players that the selectors had seen, said Mr Stewart.