Rugby Reports

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28980, 22 August 1959, Page 5

Rugby Reports

The year has been an open season for criticism of newspapers by members of the Canterbury Rugby Union’s management committee. Accounts of instances of rough play, articles deploring those incidents, and reports of matches have failed to find favour with members of the committee at various times. Everyone, it would seem, is out of step except the committee. The latest criticism came this week from Mr J. Storey, manager of the Canterbury team on its southern tour. He said that the press reports were biased when they suggested Canterbury played negative football. ,He wondered whether capable reporters were covering the games. Perhaps if Mr Storey had extended his reading a little further he would have come to the conclusion that somehow the newspaper reporters of Invercargill, Dunedin and Christcrurch had met—in committee of course—and effected a conspiracy against Canterbury, for the Press Association and local accounts of the Otago and Southland matches were all critical of Canterbury’s methods, much more so, in fact, than those which appeared in “The Press.”

Surely it is time Mr Storey and other members of the committee learned to adept reasonab’e, warranted criticism, instead of attempting to defend the in* defensible.