Rugby Officials Have Second Thoughts Or Short Memories

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30739, 1 May 1965, Page 11

Rugby Officials Have Second Thoughts Or Short Memories

rpHE efficacy of the promox tion-reiegation for the senior Rugby competition which was passed last year was doubted by “The Press” and the discussion at Tuesday’s meeting of the management committee of the Canterbury Rugby Union in no way removed those doubts. The main criticism of the rule was that it was not based on any standard of

play but the decision whether or not a team should first be admitted to the senior grade for a trial period and then permanently, was entirely at the

discretion of the management committee. Some of the members of the committee who approved the new rule must have had second thoughts, or short memories, when at Tuesday’s meeting they suggested that the committee should lay down some set rule for granting a senior reserve team entry into the senior grade.

Messrs J. Storey, C. H. McPhail and W. D. Johnston all suggested that some criterion should be established before a team could be promoted.

Unfortunately Mr Storey’s pertinent question: “Would a team that finished fourth or fifth in the senior reserve grade be promoted for a trial?” remained unanswered.

Instead the committee sought refuge in that handmaiden of all administrative bodies—the special sub-com-mittee—and reaffirmed its policy that ail matters on promotion-relegation should be at the discretion of the management committee.

Mr D. B. Doake described the present rule as “flexible.” A more apposite word might have been “flaccid.” The situation now is that two teams, Training College

and Air Force, have applied to enter the senior grade after the end of the first round.

Whether they will be granted admission will first be at the discretion of the special sub-committee which will make a report to the main committee which will then use its discretion on the sub-committee’s discretion.

If the two teams are allowed to play in the last few matches of the senior grade then the whole process presumably will be repeated again when the teams make an application for permanent admission to the senior grade in 1966.