RUGBY FOOTBALL

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 August 1920, Page 6

RUGBY FOOTBALL

THE ALL BLACKS.

DISAPPOINTING DISPLAYS.

TEAM NEVER EXTENDED

SYDNEY, August 6

. The New Zealand Rugby Union team so far, has had three wins in Sydney—and they have been very easy wins, .in the writer's opinion the All Bracks, although given worthy opponents, have not yet been fully extended. Anyone watching their play in successive matches might be pardor-ed for thinking that they played to the score —in other words, they are interested only in keeping their score a winning one, and they did not put on pressure until their opponents' score is close to cr level with their own. It is at least easy to persuade oneself -hat the wearers of the silver fern could have "won by a street" in eacli of their matches had they been so disposed. Last Saturday's match was a sharp disappointment to those who saw the first trial of strength against New South Wales. The first match was full of sparkle and excitement, and de lightful to see. The second was flat, dead, and uninteresting. It was a long series of scrums, lineouts, and scrambles in the mud. There were occasional spurts of individual brilliance, but the "machine'' —the really spectacular thing about Rugby football —seldom got into action. The ground was very soft and heavy and abjuit a hundred square yards in the dead centre of the field was simply a mud puddle. The players avoided it wherever possible, and when a man did run/ into it —well he just stopped running. And this handicap on fast and open play was greatly added to by the referee. Some new rules, which were so much Greek to the spectators, so far as lliey could discern what they were and what they purported to do, were being played to, and the referee was extraordinarily fussy about them. He saw errors in the dribbling rushes, breaches in tackKng, and wrong in everything. His whistle again and again brought about a full stop when play was working up to an interesting pjint. II sounded so continuously that at last the spectators wearied of it, and c untcd him out. There were only about seven thousand at this match. Across the fence, at a purely local League game, on a much better ground, there were said to be ten thousand spectators.

Yesterday the All Blacks played a 'etropolitan team, and. again won i-as'ly. In the first half they loated —there is no question about.it. They held their opponents too cheaply—at half-time they had the score 3 prints to 0 aga'nst them. Then they pulled themselves together. They gave a display of football more reminiscent of their first mat h, and they fin'.she J winning comfortably by 20 point;; to 11. It is a thousand pities that so many of this c :untry's best players are now in the League ranks ; there would have been a magnif cent battle between an Australian team such as used to b? put into the field ten years ago and these New Zealand g'ants. Still, some of the matches yet to ke played may try out the All Blacks.