Youth sports and club competitions

Press, 7 May 1984, Page 28

Youth sports and club competitions

Apart from the usual club competitions, the May holidays will be relatively quiet as far as sports are* concerned. Schoolboys’ football is often said to be the most refreshing segment of rugby. Sceptics who decried the under-17 inteniational between Australia and New Zealand getting top billing at Lancaster Park two or three seasons ago went away rejoicing at the standard of play. They will get a chance to enthuse once more on May 19, when the current crop of budding Wallabies and All Blacks meet in the latest of the under-17 “tests.”

Lancaster Park will again be the venue, and the rugby is expected to be as entertaining as it is intense. The New Zealand side will be captained by Andrew McCormick, one of seven Canterbury boys in the squad. The others are Richard Currie, Scott Barclay, Tony MacDonald, Stephen Harding, Jon Preston and Graeme Bachop.

Club rugby continues at great pace during the May holidays, and for those wanting to see the mighty Canterbury team limbering up for the Ranfurly Shield

season, there will be a match between the red and blacks and Marlborough in Christchurch on May 16. The Canterbury Country team will have already tried conclusions with Marlborough, in Blenheim on May 10. The sub-unions' team is making a northern pilgrimage, which includes a game . against Nelson Bays, in Motueka, on May 8. The visiting Irish boxing team will compete in a single test against the New Zealand team in Wellington on Thursday, May 10, but they will not fight in Christchurch. The boxing highlights locally could come at the Woolston Work-

ing Men’s Club’s annual tournament on the following Sunday, which will feature amateurs from most of the Christchurch gymnasiums. The first of this season’s major road cycling events will be held during the final week-end of the holidays. The 80km Amanda Wilkes Memorial group handicap will be staged around Rangiora on Saturday, May 19, and the Canterbury time trial championships, for seniors, juniors and veterans, will be raced over 40km at Yaldhurst the next day. Both events will be run .by the Canterbury centre of the New Zealand Amateur Cycling Association.

Four Canterbury sides will be involved in the first round of the H. W. Smith Trophy, the symbol of men’s national club hockey supremacy, on the final Sunday of the holidays. Woolston will play Otago University at Dunedin, Wakanui will meet the Christchurch club team Selwyn at Ashburton and in the Christchurch derby, Pegasus will challenge Sydenham.

The Christchurch club competitions, men’s and women’s, will continue as usual, although the men’s matches featuring University have been deferred for three weeks as the team has nine players involved in the

New Zealand Universities tour of Australia. The Canterbury Colts team will defend its title at the national tournament at Wanganui from May 14-19. The Canterbury Netball Association will conduct its annual handicap tournament on May 12, with the usual competitions resuming the following Saturday. The Young Australian team (comprised chiefly of under--21 players) will start its tour of New Zealand on May 17, and will play a test in Christchurch on June 2. The High School Old Boys club’s annual open tournament for A, B and C grade Sers on May 19 and 20 be the highlight of the squash programme. The Christchurch inter-club

competitions will continue on Tuesday evenings. Inter-club rugby league matches will be held each Wednesday night and Saturday, but most interest will centre on the Travelseekers inter-districts championship match at Carlaw Park, “ Auckland, on May 20. The outcome of the South IslandAuckland clash will determine the result of the championship. Christchurch Brother United will play two Rothmans soccer league matches during the holidays. The first is against McKee Nelson United at Queen Elizabeth H Park on Sunday, May 13, and the second against Papatoetoe at the same venue a week later.