Festival game in Christchurch

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33095, 9 December 1972, Page 46

Festival game in Christchurch

(New Zealand Prest Association) WELLINGTON. The All Blacks will play a festival match in Christchurch next Easter, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union council decided yesterday.

The Match, which will i probably involve the ! Cantabrians, will be at j the end of the first ] national coaching school' for promising young players.

The school will be held at Lincoln College on Easter Saturday and Easter Day. The game was opposed by the North Auckland councillor (Mr D. K. Ross), and the senior vice-president, Mr L. A. Byars, (King Country). Mr Ross said he could not reconcile the council’s holding a match with its previous standing against festival games. "In the past we have been concerned with the increasing number of invitation games,” he said. “Now we are adding to them ourselves.”

INTER-ISLAND GAME The inter-island match will be held at Okara Park, Whangarei, on June 16, the council decided. The Al Black trial match will be held at Auckland on June 13. The itineraries for the national Maori team’s tour of the South Pacific, and the New Zeland Colt’s internal tour next year are: , Maoris.—May 10 to 14, Western Samoa (two matches); May 14 to 23, Tonga (three matches); May 24 to June 9, Fiji (five matches). Colts. — May 30, Marlborough; June 2, Nelson; June 4, Buller. DIRECTOR OF SCHOOL Mr R. C. Stuart, the captain of the 1953 All Blacks in Britain, was appointed director of the national coaching school for promising young players. Mr Stuart was nominated by the Nelson-Bays Rugby Union.

The other nominations were: Messrs M. R. Barnett

(Canterbury), B. Bradwell (Counties), M. J. Dick (Auckland), and J. J. Stewart (Waikato, Wanganui, WairarapaBush, Taranaki).