Easy win for All Blacks expected

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33050, 18 October 1972, Page 34

Easy win for All Blacks expected

tN.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent)

WASHINGTON. The All Blacks should have an easy work-out when they play the second of their two matches in North America, at New York on Saturday.

They are to meet a Metropolitan New York XV which yesterday, in a final practice match, scraped in against a Washington club side, 15-10. Had it not been for a dropped pass by a Boston recruit in tiie Washington side, the New York squad might well have been beaten. “These practice matches can go wrong and we are hoping that the players have left their bad performance behind them,” said the New York XV’s chairman of selectors, Mr J. Tait, yesterday. A week earlier, New York beat Ontario, Canada, 51-0 at Toronto, but the home team had not, as hoped, been the full provincial side. There had been a breakdown in inter-union communications, Mr Tait said. The opinion within the New Zealand community in New York is that the All Blacks will win by more than 50 points. The New York XV is lacking in youthful talent to provide stiff resistance for more than the first quarter of the match. The home side is put on an equal footing with a good Withdrawal. — The American professional, L. Elder, has withdrawn from the $25,000 Wills Masters tournament scheduled to begin in Sydney tomorrow. He has been unable to obtain a clearance from competing In events in the United States.

New Zealand senior club team. It contains at least seven “exiles,” among them T. Brown, a former Christchurch player now working in New York City,