RUGBY FOOTBALL N.Z. Selector Is Confident Of Team For South Africa

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 August 1948, Page 7

RUGBY FOOTBALL N.Z. Selector Is Confident Of Team For South Africa

£I Wo ste going to get a good Lenin for South Africa,” said the chairman of the New Zealand Selection Committee Mr A. McDonald, when sneaking at a social function at Carisbrook, Dunedin, after the All Black trial match on Saturday. Mr McDonald said he was satisfied that the standard of our football now was as high as ever he knew it to be. There were still some who liked to talk about what the game used to be, but he believed it had definitely improved and that the individual players were as good as they had ever been. “If South Africa can ‘whack’ us, good luck to them,” Mr McDonald added, “but I think we have the edge on them.” He said that it did not matter to'the selectors where the players came from, North or South Island, so long as the selectors thought the players were the best available, and to those who did not succeed in gaining selection he offered a word of encouragement, because there would be othertours offering in the next lew years. 'T saw Otago play Southland, and I believe Otago is the best provincial side I have seen this season,’’ said Mr N. A. McKenzie, another member of the New Zealand Selection Committee. “I rubbed my eyes after the first 20 minutes of the game today, and then f realised that Rugby was a team game, a fact which the players themselves recognised in the second spell. Mr McKenzie said that one could not always tell the ability of players by the scores in a match, for although the North Island had scored a decisive win ever the South in 1924. the invincible All Blacks had contained almost as many South Island players as the North Island dm ing their tour of Great Britain.