Players barred from charity match

Press, 6 May 1981, Page 46

Players barred from charity match

By

JOHN COFFEY

Several rugby union players, one of them a former All Black, have had to retract their offers to participate in a charity rugby league match in aid of a critically-injured work-mate. Mr Dawson Cunningham, the secretary of the Canterbury Rugby Union, confirmed yesterday that the New Zealand union’s strict regulations relating to amateurism had been conveyed to an official of the MaristWestern Suburbs Rugby League Club.

The Marist club is planning a benefit game for Jack Tauwhare, who is now in Burwood Hospital with a serious cervical spinal injury, suffered while playing for the Marist premier B team against Sydenham at Bishopdale Park on April 14. Tauwhare will not walk again. A fund has been opened to help the popular 27-year-old freezing worker and father of two children. Fellow employees were also eager to help Tauwhare, and it is probable that the charity match will be be-

tween a freezing works team and a Marist Kill. Some of those who offered their services to the works’ side were rugbv union players. “Bill Whitehead (the Marist club’s seetretary) called into the rugby union office to check on the position,” Mr Cunningham said yesterday. “I showed him the N.Z.R.U. handbook by-laws, which we must abide by as affiliates of the national union.” The by-laws pertaining to amateurism comprise nine paragraphs barring players and clubs from being associ-

ated with their rugby league counterparts. A regulation concerning benefit or charity matches clearly relates only to rugby union. “We have to go by the handbook, which has no doubt been compiled after test cases throughout New Zealand. The name of one of the players was mentioned to me, and an official of his club has been informed of our rules, - ’ Mr Cunningham said. “It does not matter that rugby union players might take part in unofficial

friendly Sunday rugby league games. This will be a promoted match and the guidelines have been set down for our fellows to follow,” he said. “Perhaps it seems a bit severe, but where does charity end and professionalism start? It has been the rugby union’s policy in the past not to promote matches for other charities: other requests, not from rugby league, have been refused in the past. “I feel sorry for the fel-

low, but if we are to have charity games we could find causes of our own to assist. The Marist Rugby Union Club, for instance, held a match for an injured Wanganui player,” Mr Cunningham said. A Marist-Western Suburbs spokesman said that the club was now seeking a side comprised entirely of rugby league players — quite a number of present and recent representatives are available — to fill the works’ team.