“BURNT OUT”

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 193, 30 July 1932, Page 8 (Supplement)

“BURNT OUT”

YOUNG RUGBY PLAYERS SCHOOLBOYS IN BEP. GAMBB. NO TIME TO MATURE. People who have had much experience of Rugby football and other sport* in secondary schools know that there have been many lads who have shone in games at their schools .but who have failed to attain fame in sport after they have left school; their number is greater than that of those who have become famous in post-sebool sport. Converselly, there have been many who were not notable in games at school but who became “stars*' afterwards.

There are several factors in this—physique, waning ambition or lack of attention to practice and technique, the severing of ties with other players with whom there had existed a good understanding, general environment, and so on—and I do not propose to discuss them all. But there is one point that is of some immediate and general interest, writes “A.L.C.” in the Christchurch “Sun.”

A correspondent who signed himself “Hopeful” advocated the inclusion of a certain five-eighth of the Christchurch Boys’ High School team in the Canterbury Rugby team. What I wish to do is to deprecate the tossing of boys into senior and representative football before they have become properly fitted for this more strenuous type of game. It should not be forgotten that there have been many more promising young players who have not represented their province because they were spoiled by being thrust into senior football too soon. The exceptional young players who have won higher honours and who have continued for a considerable time in representative football have been unusually well fitted by qualities of physical endurance. But there have not been many who have started very young and who have retained their brilliance for a long time. And some have regretted that they were not allowed to mature more slowly and stay in the game for longer periods. As time goes on the proportion of players who come from secondary schools —and district high schools, which will become larger, are included in this classification —- will become greater. The old boys clubs should se* to it that their players mature naturs ally, and not by a forcing process. One of the contributory causes of th* present shortage of really good centra backs in Rugby is that too many young players have been brought up ififo senior football before the natural maturing process had advanced far enough.