TEAM OF VETERANS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 221, 14 June 1930, Page 12

TEAM OF VETERANS

All Blacks for First Test SOME STRAIGHT TALK Selectors ‘Living in the Past’ Dominion Special Service. Dunedin, June 13. “Full-back,” the well-known and authoritative football critic of the “Otago Daily Times,’’.indulges in some pointed criticism of the All Black team which has been selected for the Test match. “After looking over the names of the 19 players from whom the' 15 All Blacks to play against the British team will be selected,” he writes, “followers of the game must experience a distinct sense of disappointment. We talk about the high standard of the game in New Zealand and the numbers who play it, but the selectors of New Zealand teams have now rudely damped our enthusiasm. They sgy, in effect, that at the present day we have no promising young footballers, and then taking the line of least resistance they rely on what may without exaggeration be termed a team of veterans. Not Good Judges. “I shall endeavour to prove that the selectors are not good judges of football and that it is time they, with some of the veterans, were retired to the bank to give younger men, both players arid selectors, an opportunity to show their worth. Of the 19 players provisionally selected we have eight who went to England as far back as 1924 and nine who went to South Africa in 1928. Hart, Oliver, Cottrell, Steere and Batty are, therefore, what may be termed the only new players, although Cottrell and Steere went to Australia with the New Zealand team in 1929. “It is to the members Of the team that went to England in 1924 that I desire to refer,” “Full-back” continues. “It is common knowledge that Nepia, Mill, Nicholls, and Irvine, at any rate, have time and again stated that they had finished with the game. Cooke, moreover, has played in turn for Auckland, Hawke’s Bay and Wairarapa, and is now in Wellington, and he, too, has stated more than once that he was giving up the game. Porter, moreover, could not get into the team which went to Australia last year. He was reckoned to be done, so far as football was concerned. Robbing Youth of its Chance. “Now, I do not wish it to be thought that these veterans who have come back are not playing good football. What I want to state, and to state most emphatically, is that they and others will ymost probably give the game best this year, and that through the instrumentality of the selectors they have robbed many capable young players, with plenty of football in front of them, of ever having a chance of playing against an international side. Will any follower of the gjtme claim that we have not young players in the Dominion who could fill the positions allotted to these veterans? And let me at this point congratulate both Hart and Oliver on having obtained a chance of inclusion in the team. Is there no young player who could supplant Porter? No five-eighth who could take the place of Nicholls? No full-back as good as Nepia? No half-back as clever as Mill, who is brilliant on attack but not so brilliant on defence? , “The position is absurd. We have young promising backs all over the Dominion, but the selectors stick to the veterans. The famous saying that the next hardest thing to getting into an Australian cricket team is to get out of it again can well be applied to our New Zealand representative Rugby teams. “Then, take Irvine. He had actually, if memory serves aright, dropped out of the game, but he comes back, and a younger player with, as I have stated, plenty of football in front of him, stands on the bank. Living in the Past.i “The action of the selectors is not going to help our football, and they have, to my mind, shown a hopeless lack of Initiative,” he continues. “Our football lives in the future; the selectors are living in the past I know from past experience that the New Zealand selectors resent any criticism on their selections, nor do they welcome suggestions. Might I humbly submit to them, however, a suggestion that for one of the Tests at any rate a completely new and -different New Zealand, team should'be selected? I will go further and suggest to the Management Committee of the New Zealand Rugby Union that it should instruct its selectors to pick a complete new team for that match. “The New Zealand selectors have thought that a team of young players could not beat the British team,” "Full-back” concludes. “I confidently assert that they could, and by doing so add to the general interest in the game. Even if they could not, the interest would still be stimulated, and a defeat would be neither a disaster nor a tragedy.”