RUGBY IN BRITAIN

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 79, 27 December 1929, Page 11

RUGBY IN BRITAIN

DOMINIONS’ TOUR ACTING AS TONIC PAST SEASON REVIEWED “Although there is again this season no invasion from overseas to be encountered,” writes H. R. McDonald in the “Daily Mail Year Book,” “our preparations for the visit of a British team to Australia and New Zealand are acting as a cheery tonic on play and players. Such a tonic is both welcome and necessary with English Rugger, from an international point of view, in a transition stage. It is many years since England called upon so many players for her international matches as she did last winter. There were 29 in all, but the youngsters who were given a chance in the later games suggest that good times are in store for the Old Country. When the problems of captaincy have been settled and a reliable stand-off half is found, our lost honours may be won back easily. „ ~ , “Just at the moment Scotland, owing to improved forward play—J. M. Bannerman put up a Scottish record last campaign with 37 caps—and to the possession of such brilliant threes as lan Smith, known as ‘The Flying Scotsman,’ and G. P. S. Macpherson, is top dog. There are signs, however, of a Welsh revival-— with the assistance of Cambridge—while Ireland, in G. V. Stephenson, boasts perhaps the greatest match-winner in the four countries. Had Stephenson, who broke the world’s record for caps when playing in his thirty-eighth international, been able to. play against Scotland, the. championship might easily belong at this present moment to ‘John Bull’s Other Island. “France, the fifth participant each season in the great international championship, have proved a bit of a disappointment, but the French are not always able to send their strongest team across the Channel. In club Rugger, where there has been a general levelling-up and an increase in the number of fifteens, no side stands out as some of the great elub sides of the past did. In' many ways this is a good thing for the game.“With a truce called between the nations on the vexed questions of the game’s laws, all is quiet on the political front. With no change in the laws for three years, chibs, players and countries have been able to get on with the game and set their houses in order. But whatever the immediate future may have in store for the English Rugby Unionists, their. interests and inspirations are safe in the hands of the new president of the Rugby Union. Mr. W. T. Pearce, the old Bristol half-back, who is the first Gloucestershire man to attain this great distinction in the Rugby world.”