RUGBY “PASSING THE BUCK”

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30200, 3 August 1963, Page 19

RUGBY “PASSING THE BUCK”

Provincial Unions Give Selectors Tough Task [By Our Rugby Correspondent) The North and South Island selectors today will choose 30 players for the annual match to be played at Lancaster Park on August 10.

Their task will not have been made any easier by the number of nominations they have received for the teams —93 from North Island unions and 61 from the South Island.

It seems to have become an accepted practice by provincial selectors to thrust players forward for inter-island or national selection without much thought of the standard that is required by a player to be chosen for one of these teams.

Possibly toe provincial selectors maintain that it is the job of the island selectors to choose the teams, therefore it does not matter how many names are put forward. Otherwise, how could South Canterbury and Mid-Canter-bury justify putting forward eight and seven names respectively for the South Island team. In effect these unions are saying that at least half of the players in their teams are capable of playing for the South Island.

Surely provincial selectors who are given the right to nominate players should exercise some degree of responsibility in forwarding names.

It seems rather far fetched that North Otago should nominate one player as either flanker or No. B—suggesting that -local selectors do not know’ which is his best position; that Otago should

nominate three locks; South Canterbury a player as first five-eighths or half-back-Canterbury two bookers, and Taranaki one player for three positions. If the provincial selectors are deemed capable of selecting teams they should, when nominations are made for a South Island team, know, or have decided, which are the best players they have for certain positions and not pass that responsibility on to the island, selectors. As the position is now. the selectors, both for the North and the South Island could be excused for paying little heed to the nominations put before them for they bear only a minor degree of relevance to the final selection of 15 players. It appears that provincial selectors are nominating players more with the idea of encouraging them than with the hope that they will be chosen for the team.