RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30215, 21 August 1963, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

THE TUMULT AND SHOUTING DIES

The club Rugby season is now over. The competition winners will be announced, after the necessary litigation to determine what teams in which grades have been playing how many boys over-age or over-weight how often. It is a sad time of the year for the men and women who throng the side-lines of the suburban grounds, or Hagley Park, to offer advice and support to those near and dear to them, and for those of the coaches to whom success is measured only in terms of competition points. Referees will not be advised, for about eight months, to take off their

red jerseys—or blue, or green, or white. Invitations to young gentlemen of five and six years of age to get stuck in will be extended no longer. And these youthful gladiators will no longer be advised, in moments of crisis, that they are silly, sanguinary and mentally retarded. Some sort of uneasy peace will be observed among the rival factions. Men will not be moved to observe to the strangers standing beside them that the other team lacks ethics and morals or that if his side had had a decent coach it would have won the competition easily. Youngsters will no longer be instructed that it would have been better to have

got off-side and given away three points to have taken the risk which cost five and the match. The voices of the coaches will be stilled and the grounds will no longer seem to be crowded auction rooms at the height of a sale. One may well ask what becomes of all these vociferous rivals. They now migrate, of course, to Lancaster Park, for the series of representative matches. And there they will achieve a glorious unity, alternately tearto shreds the reputations of the Canterbury coaches and selectors and baying abuse at referees with the temerity to penalise Canterbury. All for the glory of sport