ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL AUSTRALIAN SPORT ATTACKED

Grey River Argus, 27 June 1947, Page 3

ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL AUSTRALIAN SPORT ATTACKED

By Springbok Soccer Manager P.A. CHRISTCHURCH, June 26. “None of us ever wants to see Australia again’’, said the South African soccer team’s manager, Mr J. Barbour, when the team arrived from Wellington. “If we had known that soccer in Australia is professional, we would have never gone there, because, in South Africa, we are insistent on the difference between amateur and professional sport more than any other country in the world.

“I think South Africa has stood up for amateur sport, and there is little professional sport there. The members of our team get £3 a week out-of-pocket expenses, and we got a shock when we learned that Australian players were getting £l2 a match, with hotel accommodation and all expenses thrown in.

“From what we s’aw of it, there is no real sport in Australia”, Mr Barbour declared. “The whole set-up is rotten with money. There is a lot of betting on the outcome of matches. We objected to the man who refereed all the test matches. Some of his decisions were quite obviously unfair. In fact, in the last test he was ‘booed’ by the crowd, and when an Australian crowd boos the Australian referee of a match against a visiting team, he must be pretty blatant in the unfairness of his decisions. We heard that a lot of money had been lost as the result of the tests.

“Our team actually played against the same team ten times”, said Mr Barbour, “and when they could not beat us, they set out in the last couple of games to main us deliberately and intentionally, kicking and foul charging our boys to maim them.

“It was not soccer at all. But still we lost only once against them, and drew once, on muddy grounds that our boys are not used to. Fair refereeing would have produced a very different score in both those games. In Sydney, alone, there are more soccer players than there are in the whole of South Africa, so, whether we played Australia or New South Wales, it was still the same team.

“Quite a lot of the members of our team met New Zealanders in the Middle East”, said Air Barbour. “With the exception of two, who were too young to enlist, they all saw service. They liked New Zealanders that they met overseas, and they have found them equally likeable at home”.