RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume C, Issue 29536, 10 June 1961, Page 19

RANDOM REMINDER

AFTER YOU, CLAUD

The introduction to Christchurch of a code of ethics for Rugby players has made the season an unusual one. The rules, unwritten of course, have been in force in Dunedin for some years. They deal with footling items such as the line-out and the advantage line. Clearly, they have not gone far enough. The intention of the code of ethics is to make the game more attractive for spectators and players. It would become even more enjoyable if a few additions were made. For instance, this horrid business of selling dummies. Nothing makes a player look more foolish than acceptance of this cheap deception. The dummy is deep-dyed duplicity, and should be abandoned as morally wrong. It is a first cousin of the wrong’un in cricket—a device

frowned on years ago by all those with the interests of the game at heart, until they had learned how to use it themselves. Again, forwards should be discouraged from using abusive terms such as “Cissy!” to each other in the heaving depths of the ruck. And all this struggling for possession in the line-outs: would it not be better to take turns? The up-and-under will have to go, too. That particular stratagem, which requires a C layer—often a fullack who looks like a rather poor insurance risk—to stand beneath the ball while a horde of hirsute forwards descends on him. with nothing but his swift and utter discomfort in mind, is an affront to common decency. How can the unfortunate player do other than think, as he waits, of what his fiancee will say when he arrives to‘take her out looking

like something left behind after a hack-alley brawl. The less sanguine might even wonder if they will arrive to take her out at all There was a notable match years ago, when a Fijian team of vast proportions and unbounded enthusiasm won its rucks by taking huge swinging kicks at the ball, or any other nearby target, instead of raking it back. So when a Canterbury player wa» required to take an up-and-under kick, he was given cause to think. A swift calculation of the pace of the advancing enemy and its relation to the flight of the ball convinced him he would be better employed elsewhere. He happened to be a school-teacher, and he was accused bv his pupils on the Monday morning of having walked away from the ball. “No. boys,” he answered, “I ran.”