RUGBY UNION 'Interest In Back Play Achieved”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31306, 28 February 1967, Page 19

RUGBY UNION 'Interest In Back Play Achieved”

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON.

The chairman of the New Zealand Rugby selection panel (Mr F. R. Allen) has joined other top national administrators in the quest for free-running back play.

Mr Allen told between 300 and 400 young players and coaches at the Wellington Rugby Union coaching school for backs yesterday that the balance of the game had been lost. “We must take stock,” he said, “and get back to the A.B.C. of back play. Let us try to see if we can balance up team play by using our backs. “We are running too far in our inside back positions. We must spin the ball quickly and avoid kicking it out all the time. Too many players have got to the stage where they are kicking the game away. “ART LOST” “We are neither using our centres, nor varying our play enough. We do not see the sidestep and swerve simply

because players are not giving their time to the game. "The art of blindside play has been lost,” he said. Mr Allen said Rugby was not a parlour game and to him the talk of rough play recently was nonsense.

He said Rugby was no more rugged than it had been years ago. He appealed to young playe-s: “Let’s try running the ball foi a change.”

In Saturday’s session men like T. C. Morrison, J. L. Sullivan and C. G. Gibions agreed that New Zealand's back play had not kept pace with the forward development and that it was imperative to bring the backs more into the game. After hours of practical work at Athletic Park on Saturday and yesterday, Mr Gibbons said: “Undoubtedly the aim to create additional interest in back play has been achieved.”