TRIBAL WARFARE

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 134, 3 December 1936, Page 5

TRIBAL WARFARE

FOOTBALL AS SUBSTITUTE

CURE WORSE THAN DISEASE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, November 27. So many deaths have been caused by native football matches in New Guinea that a leading chief asked a district officer to discuss the matter at a native council meeting. This officer is expected to make a startling report to the Administrator.

The prohibition imposed by the authorities on tribal warfare left warriors without recreation and when (he Administration introduced football they took eagerly to it. At first gratified by this keenness, the authorities became perturbed at the regularity with which casualties were reported from fields.

A match played at Rabaul began with the orthodox number of players, but after half an hour's play,\and in spite of a dozen. warriors, who lay stunned or bleeding on the'field, the number had increased to 57. The police, interfered, and the players were lined up for examination. Seven of them were armed with knives, 17 had broken bottles, nine had razor blades, and the balance carried stone clubheads, 6in nails, or short hardwood sticks with sharpened points. That was the end I of football at Rabaul.

However, natives who returned to their home villages in the mountains took the story of the game with them. The result was a form of "grudge", football between rival tribes, in which, according to reports,, the mortality rate has become higher even than that in the old tribal wars.