RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30578, 22 October 1964, Page 36

RANDOM REMINDER

STRIKE ONE

Three weeks, now, since winter sports ground to their official halt, but still there are Rugby ripples on the smooth surface of summer. All through the heat, New Zealand will be wondering about the Springboks, and players will start their training schedules, and the arguments will begin. But there will be one small group of winter sports followers who will remember, for some time, the closing of the soccer season with particular delight, and it is a reflection on human nature that their enjoyment is based on the misfortunes of one of their colleagues. We know a hockey player who had a terrible moment in a match at Nelson some years ago. He was in goal, and when two opposing players clashed, they managed somehow to shoot the ball up to an incredible height. The goalie watched it ascend, but then lost it in the sun; and he was in no

mood for the ribald remarks of his fellow-players after the ball had landed with a dull thud beside him and tottered into the net. But this soccer matter was even worse. It was an inter-flrms match, with a spirit of considerable rivalry. One of the teams started with two handicaps: it had to play into a very fierce wind, and it was three players short. Later two more men came on, and the side did extremely well to stave off the opposition until some two minutes before halftime. It was then that a downwind player booted for goal from about 40 yards, out although careful observation placed his operational limit at some 30 yards. However, assisted by the breeze, the ball bounced evenly towards the goal, where a young man of much enthusiasm stood, all eager to make the save. He shifted nervously from one foot to the other as the ball rolled along, and then decided

the time for action had come. He swung his right arm vigorously in the first movement of the swoop and pick-up; but it became firmly enmeshed in the netting. He must have felt, as he struggled to free himself, rather like one of those gladiatorial contestants waiting for the trident But the more he struggled, the firmer he was fixed and he was still like a fly in a web when the ball rolled gently over the line and Into the goal. His captain, a gentleman with iron-grey hair, irongrey complexion (after the first few minutes) and iron-grey resolve, was obviously disappointed at the outcome of this passage of arms. He turned away, so the goalie would not see his face, nor hear his terse comment. But the goalie was disgusted too; and what more natural than that he should give the ball a great and disgusted kick which sent it, true as an arrow, to strike his skipper fairly on the back of the neck?