SHIELD RUGBY.

Evening Star, Issue 22413, 10 August 1936, Page 13

SHIELD RUGBY.

ro TBS EDITOR Sir, —Your leader, ‘ Shield Rugby,’ in lost night’s issue is in bad taste, being full of cant and discourtesy. Those words are yours, but you ask us to treat it as constructive criticism. The comparison between the game of last Saturday and of yesterday is odious. Saturday’s match was just an incident in a day’s clowning and ballyhoo, but quite good stuff for a day’s fun. Southland arrive with an array of pipe bands, 6,000 supporters (and, incidentally, a few thousand pounds of pocket money), never look like winning, but maintain their sporting reputation. Popularity is easy under those conditions.

Auckland arrive, of course, with just a football team, play a solid game and one dangerous right up to the call of time. According to your description of the game, the Auckland backs were all weak, and the forwards “ shiners,” cunningly ignorant of the rules, just why our sturdy little team did not put the issue beyo'hd doubt more decisively is difficult to see. But you ask us to swallow the camel holus-bolus when you state that the northern style of play and refereeing has allowed the League code to flourish, and caused our international decline in the Rugby world. For cock-eyed parochialism your leader is hard to beat, and tends to create a provincial bias against other northern teams, still to play for the shield here. We want our large crowd of supporters to be as sporting as the 15 men we put on the field, and if the “ log of wood ” has done any harm in the past it has been in the direction of perverting the fairmindedness of the shield holders’ supporters, some of whom are commercially advantaged.—l am, etc., Otago. August 7,