BRIGHTER FOOTBALL

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 134, 8 June 1935, Page 22

BRIGHTER FOOTBALL

A PRESENT-DAY NEED

A correspondent ("Western Banker") writes.'—"l bid hoped that ere this some abler pen than mine would have been employed in the cause of. brighter football, but as it is probable most football .followers are in the same position as myself, hoping that some one else would take up the cudgels, and as none have yet done so (at least I have not observed any) I feel constrained! to at least introduce the matter. In! this wish for brighter football I am

not alone. It is an old saw that "hope deferred maketh the heart sick," and certain it is that those attending the matches nowadays do get "fed up" • with the shocking exhibitions we have been treated to lately, and from the A grade teams at that. And is. it any wonder? '

; .'. "The fault is not so much with the player? as with, the rules governing .the game. For instance, in the match on, the King's Birthday at the Athletic Park between the Old Boys and Hutt teams, the ball was lacked out of bounds no less than 134 times. by actual count. The resulting play is easy to imagine—nothing but a series of 'sacks on the mill' for, at a guess, half of the game. The idea of line- . kicking as we see it in operation today may be good generalship (and this is often questionable) and quite legitimate as a means of conserving the energy of the players; but it results in exceptionally poor football, and when it is adopted to the extent indulged in in Monday's match (and this game was not in any sense an exception to the rule, but perhaps just a little greater in degree) it becomes, to put it politely, monotonous. At least, this is the view taken s by the spectators as judged by the remarks continually heard during the progress of almost any match. The spectator attends the matches in the hope of seeing a good game, and he is surely .entitled to some consideration, at least in those parks and reserves where he la called upon to pay, and where he willingly pays. But apart from the financial aspect, may we soon hope for brighter football, and a return to the game as it was played in its best days of bygone years."