Basketball N.Z. TOURNEY

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29237, 22 June 1960, Page 4

Basketball N.Z. TOURNEY

Exclusion Of Tauranga

Team

(New Zealand Press Association) TAURANGA, June 21,

■ The Tauranga Basketball Association has received no reply from the executive of the New Zealand association to what the president (Mrs W. J. Denniston) called “a strongly-worded protest” against the exclusion of the Tauranga team from the 1960 New Zealand championships. Mrs Denniston said this morning that the combined executives of the Tauranga association, the Te Puke sub-association and the Katikati division had met last week-end and composed a letter to the national executive objecting to its attitude toward the loss of the Tauranga entry. The Tauranga association maintains that it mailed its entry early in April for the second grade championships. But the national executive has said that the entry was not received, and unless a Post Office check shows that it went astray through no fault of the Tauranga association, the Tauranga team will not be admitted to the draw.

The postmaster at Tauranga (Mr R. H. Wilson) said today that an inquiry into the whereabouts of the letter had been launched, but might take up to a month. He said that it would be wise for big organisations to adopt the procedure of acknowledging applications or entries of this type if the letters were not registered. In this case, the Tauranga Basketball Association would have known something was wrong when it received no acknowledgement of its entry from the national executive, he added.