Sports Topic— COAST FOOTBALL

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 September 1949, Page 1 (Supplement)

Sports Topic— COAST FOOTBALL

This has been a season for “inquests” as far as New Zealand football is concerned and, it must be admitted, the need has spread to the West Coast which has experienced a bad year as far as representative honours are concerned. The Rugby side to date, has had only one win, the Rugby League team has done little better and the Soccer team suffered its' first defeat in an interprovincial fixture for three years. Every province has its cycles of good years and bad, but, taking a broad, view of the general picture, it does appear that an ‘‘inquest” or two would not do any harm on the West Coast. The fact that our teams in all codes have been outpaced in the most vital games seems to point to the fact that there may be something wrong with our training methods. Are we reaping the harvest of the lack of gymnasiums and other facilities in the district to permit of training during long spells of unfavourable weather, or are our players “Saturday footballers” only and not sufficiently interested to undertake really intensive training?

Football is becoming ‘more and ■more a specialised game and players who are not at the peak of physical fitness cannot pect to reach the top. And, real fitness cannot be gained by spasmodically kicking a ball about a paddock. It might be a sound idea for all codes to ( throw their weight behind the*scheme to establish a proper gymnasium at Greymouth.