Slugging To In-Fighting

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31120, 25 July 1966, Page 1

Slugging To In-Fighting

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R. T. BRITTENDEN)

If the Rugby test to be played in Christchurch next month is to be conducted on the lines of Canterbury s match with the Lions on Saturday, it might be useful to have the playing area roped in, and to provide stools, buckets and sponges.

Saturday’s match began as a sluggin,; contest and for the

first 15 minutes it was a disgraceful display of hooliganism. The referee then managed to restrain the players. particularly the front-row forwards, to in-fighting.

But it was little wonder. that the Lions manager (Mr| D. J. O’Brien) should be pro-; yoked into the startling state-1 went he made after the. match. Mr O’Brien had in mind to say something on similar lines earlier in the tour, but withheld comment because his team was losing matches and he was not willing to be accused of “squealing.” The president of the New; Zealand union (Mr H. C.| Blazey) is a thoughtful, able] administrator, and his view; that the Lions’ alleged ob i structive tactics may be the. basis of the present unhappy; situation must be respected,! for there can be no doubt; of his sincerity. But if the teams which; have opposed the Lions were; without blemish in those mat-; ters, or if there had not been; much deplorably rough playin New Zealand’s domestic Rugby this season, his statement would have carried more conviction. OTHER EXAMPLES A schools’ match in Christchurch recently produced unhappy incidents and public reaction. During the weekend there were newspaper reports of the captains of an inter-school game in Wellington being called together after “feet and fists had swung freely”; in a Wellington club game, "fighting often broke out among the forwards.”

These incidents are not in vented by reporters to annoy Rugby administrators who resolutely turn a blind eye to the unsavoury standards in many club and provincial games. The men running Rugby must surely be aware that the public is heartily! tired of the brawling and bruising. Referees need the courage, sustained by the knowledge that they will be supported, to send men off the field, even in an international match. CHILD AND MAN At Lancaster Park on Saturday the small boys in the crowd must have run into thousands. The organisation set up to nrotect them, and to prevent them swarming over the field, was first-class. But what of the spectacle they saw? That Saturdav’s match was dull, was a disappointment: that it produced such dreadful displays of ill tem-

per and such a lack of selfcontrol was deplorable: “Give us the child and we will give I you the man.”

A week earlier, at Dunedin, the first test match between the Lions and the All Blacks was almost free of rough play. Saturday’s exhibition leads to the unhappy conclusion that it was so because it was a one sided encounter.