JUNIOR TOUR

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30426, 28 April 1964, Page 15

JUNIOR TOUR

Approval Expected Formal approval for a schoolboy Rugby League tour of • Australia next year is expected to be granted at tonight’s meeting of the New Zealand Rugby League Schoolboys’ Council in Christchurch. The plan was accepted by the -annual delegates’ meeting in Wellington on Saturday. The team will be announced after the eighteenth annual schoolboys’ tournament in Rotorua in August. The tour, to be of two weeks’ duration, will probably . consist of six matches in New South Wales. The decision to tour New South Wales follows a successful tour last year by that state. In the first international schoolboys’ Rugby League match New Zealand defeated New South Wales, 6-3, in Christchurch- The standard of football, reached by the players in the poor conditions was probably a deciding factor in the decision to send a team aWay. The council will seek approval for the boys to tour from the Director of Education and the New Zealand Rugby League Council. The team will comprise boys under the age of 15 on May 1, as does the national tournament. It is expected that 19 players, two managers and a coach will comprise the party. The tour will undoubtedly give schoolboy football in the country much good .and should raise the standard. The national tournament has already produced players like R. K. Griffiths, G. M. Kennedy, G. S. Farrar, G. C. Blackler, B. T. Reidy and R. W. Bailey, all of whom have represented New Zealand in recent years.