RUGBY CONTROL

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 213, 22 August 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

RUGBY CONTROL

ENGLISH PRESIDENT’S ADVICE TO FRANCE. Referring to the relations of the four home unions at the annual meeting of the English Rugby Union in London recently, Mr. Walter T. Pearce (Bristol), elected president for the third successive year, said: — “England will never act separately from the three other unions. Affairs m France, owing to the propaganda which has gone on in connection with the two rival bodies there, make it. impossible for Us to send teams over. As England did many years’ago, when the northern clubs broke away a'nd almost threatened the existence of the Rugby Union game, France must, in like circumstances, face the issue boldly and put her house ■in order. They must recover direction and they must recover discipline. “I would like to offer a friendly word of advice to France, not so much in my capacity as president of the English Union, but as an individual jealous of the traditions of our great game. The fact that they have recovered direction and discipline can be proved only on the field of play, and it must be proved first of all to our entire satisfaction before relations can be resumed.

“We are not asking France,’’ he added, “to do anything we ourselves have not done or are not prepared to do if at any time in the future the necessity should arise for us to do it."