A Feilding "Gym."

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 271, 21 May 1907, Page 2

A Feilding " Gym."

Wfi are glad to notice that our football contributor is not alone in voicing the necessity for a gymnasium in which football players can get that exercise and practice which is denied them outside when the weather is wet and sloppy. To our mind the greatest virtue in football is that its best exponents must be sound in body, and according to Dr. Cockburn, onetime Minister of the Crown in South Australia and afterwards Agent-Gen-eral in London, brain development is the result and the concomitant of muscular perfection — the man with the best brains, if he only knows how to use them, is the best all- ! round athlete. In Wellington, all the clubs have their gymnasiums while at Petone, where the senior championship has rested several years and the subsidiary championships frequently stay, gymnasium practice is almost a science. The captain of the club, who won his V.C. in the Boer war, takes charge of the senior team, and all the feints and dodges of the backs and the combinations and tricks of the forwards are practised' with the assiduity which is tho precursor to success; while an ex-senior player takes charge of each junior team, and perfects them in the work which has already made their elders famous in the district. Regular attendance at these muscular-devlopment meetings is a sine qua non for selection, and there is no reason for complaint about lack of interest on this score. Whether a man work or play, it is always best accomplished when done well, and we sincerely hope that something will be done to afford our youths every facility for becoming manly men — good-tempered, forbearing, strenuous and plucky — the best foundation for the production of good citizens.