THE KIWIS’ ART

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21923, 18 January 1946, Page 4

THE KIWIS’ ART

RUGBY RHYTHM

BRITON’S COMMENT

LESSON TO BE. LEARNED

(Special Correspondent.) LONDON, Jan. 16.

Tile progress of the New Zealand Army Rugby team has caused some he'art-searching among the English clubs—which are admittedly at a low ebb as a result of the war. "What is wrong with English Rugby?” asks Mr. Percy Rudd in the News-Chronicle. He adds: “The way in which the New Zealand Army team continues to ride roughshod over our representative sides suggests that there is something wrong. On January 12 we saw them—the pick of a single division, make an example of the best fifteen our Combined Services could produce. In the week previous one of the New Zealanders had told me that they thought the Services might heat them; yet our fellows had no reply to the seven tries and five goals by their opponents.

British Teaching Wrong?

"Why are we thus slaughtered to make a Kiwi holiday? Have we not got thfe right material, pace and brawn? The New Zealanders, at any rate, think we have all three. The inference is that we do not make the best use of them —our teaching or our training is wrong, possibly both. "These Kiwis have, in fact, much to teach us in the arts of the game. The perfection of their teamwork, tha covering of one player by another, and the quickness to pounce on and turn to account opponents’ mistakes, and, above all, the way in which a man as he falls in a tackle puts the ball on the ground alongside of him, where it is immediately retrieved by a colleague in attendance and the attack goes on. “Compare this last-named method v*th the English habit of throwing a wild pass, often forward, in the hope that someone will be there to take it and you will get very near the r oot of the trouble. Use of Film Sought “A very good film was made of the Wales versus New Zealand match at Cardiff Arms Park by the excellent photographic team attached to the tourists. I suggest, in all seriousness that their co-operatiqn should be secured to provide copies of this, which might be shown to all schools where Rugbv is played, so that the young idea could begin to be trained on the right lines. . "Rugby football is almost a religion in New Zealand. Sometimes, perhaps, they think about it too much. We, I am afraid —by we I mean our players and team managements—don’t think about it enough. Only much thought and practice can evolve the beautiful rhythm of these Kiwis’ football.”