TOO SPECIALISED TESTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 November 1930, Page 9

TOO SPECIALISED TESTS

THE BETTER WAY. The news that Great Britain had been conquered in the Bridge Test with the United States of America, coming, as it did, after a long seiies of disasters by flood and field, brought grief to countless, homes throughout cur land. It had been hoped that the team chosen would carry the old lion to victory at last (wrote E. V. Knox, the well-known humorist, in the London “Sunday Times,” on October 8 last). “Wc have set the slughorn to our lips,” said a prominent club player to me, "and I believe we shall win through.” But, alas’ it was not to be so. "A sorrow’s crown of sorrows,” my tobacconist murmured with a melancholy smile, as I bought from him a packet of cigarettes, which I knew would taste bitter in my mouth as never before. It was possible, of course, to find excuses. The fact that our champions were sitting on strange chairs, playing at a foreign table, and, if my informant is correct, had not even troubled to bring their own packs across the water with them, J.he unusual life, the unfamiliar language all these things militated against our chances of .success. There may even have been (who knows?) a failuieof team spirit, a lack of esprit de corps, in the actual arena. . Nor was the team itself chosen by the public vote of the democracy, as expressed by correspondence to the principal morning papers. Very likely the sea was rough, and (here, again, I speak without personal knowledge) tho bootlegged whisky of a headier brand than ours. But we must not dwell on these things.

Enough to say that we went down, but with the old flag flying, and the ace of spades ' nailed, as always, to the mast. There is now no possibility of regaining our laurels on the green baize, unless by any chance we triumph in the Miss Milligan Patience Marathon, which is scheduled, I believe, to take place at Philadelphia on Armistice Day. For myself, I think we play too many of these acid tests, especially these acid tests with America. Specialisation in any form of athletic prowess is the breath of life to oui cousins overseas. Whenever a child in tho cradle is seen to hold his rattle with an overlapping grip, he is singled out from his fellows, trained, boosted, encouraged, press-agented, dieted, and photographed, until at the age of five or six years he is playing round the Big Moose Course at Wyoming steadily under mommer, if not indeed under par. What is true of golf is true of tennis, of yachting, of trotting, of polo, of Scripture lotto, of spillikins. But that is not the true English way. Keen historians who have studied the story of Drake and the Armada with all the documentary evidence avail able, and in the light of Elizabethan tendencies in general, are unable io determine whether the great Sir I 1 rancis actually bowled the winning wood before he put to sea from Plymouth Hoe. We know that he preferred to finish his game rather than enter into the tiresome preliminaries of a naval engagement a moment before the Spaniards left the oiling -in in which they had been last observed. But we do not. know whether he shot any good stuff during tho remaining ends. Very likely he was only an average performer at bowls, but we may be quite sure that ho was at least an average performer in all the other Elizabethan tournaments. He would wag a good quaiicitail, he would tilt you at the quintain as well as another man. At nine men’s morris, however long-drawn the agony, however pent the emotions. | his nerve would not fail him at any .crisis of the game.

THE ISLAND SPIRIT. So it is even to-day wi.th the most of us Englishmen. Now at golf, now at. squash rackets, now at. dominoes, we will chance our arm, instead of consecrating the whole of our lifetime pressing the whole pep and fibre ol our being, as the Westerner does, to one of these pastimes alono. 1 have a friend, Smith. ‘•Swim across the Thames with me?” I have said to him many a time. “It is too wet to swim across the Thames,” he will say to pie in reply. “I will take you on at shoveha’penny instead.” Or very likely we will sit down to a brisk bout of" backgammon. This is the island spirit. 1 maintain—l have always maintained —that we possess more good all-rounders than any other nation of the world. Let us, then, if we must have tests with America, cease to hold these tests in specialisation, which never do justice to our own peculiar wavewashed bent. I propose lather that next year we should let cry a Joust of All-Round Skill, and send out some twenty challengers to do battle for us in contest like this: — One round of golf. Ono square of hopscotch. Ono set of tennis. One partie at picquet. One standing long jump. One fifty yards dash. One match of archery. One throw of the hammer. One hour’s sea-fishing. One cast of the quoit. One point-to-point steeplechase.

Fifty up at bagatelle. All these to count equal points and to be played in the same day, and nourishment, if any, to be consumed without stopping the revelry. Chewing is barred. In this, or some similar dodekathlon, I fee! assured that Englishmen would hob! their own against America, and perhaps against the world. ' If I were invited to alter the test, 1 have a. score of substitutes up my sleeve. How ■would Mr W. T. Tilden stand if, after three sets of tennis, he had to change instantly for a prawning contest, dash back to a rock climb, play a round of miniature golf, swim out to a raft, dress, dry, run up a steep cliff bath, and plunge immediately into a stern grapply at tiddleywinks? Would he be able to stand at all? Yet I have known Englishmen do this and scarcely boast of it afterwards.

It is this many-sided athleticism that proves the true mettle of a man. Mr R. T. .Jones, if I had my way. should be allowed to win no more golf championships without being instantly challenged to a bicycle race by his defeated antagonist. Or, again, is his hand to steady at skcc-ball, his strategy so overwhelming at draughts, as on the putting-green? We have at

present no means of knowing. But, until WO know these things we should no( bo content, to lie at the proud foot of a conqueror. St. Crispin’s day is the day 1 should choose for such a dodekathlon against America or any team that dares try their fortune in the lists. And if all goes well, as I believe it must go, many an Englishman, I am pretty sure, will stand a -tiptoe when this day is named, and rouse him at the name of Crispi.au. And let the selectors remember, before the hour approaches, that I myself throw a very tolerable squail.