Oroua Players and Manawatu Rep. Team

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 187, 9 August 1940, Page 8

Oroua Players and Manawatu Rep. Team

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Do the selectors for the Manawatu Rugby Union realise that members of the Oroua Sub-Union are available for representation in Manawatu Rugby teams? Do they also remember that Oroua defeated Manawatu B in a Wallace Cup game at Kimbolton this year? We were told that Manawatu were playing six emergencies. That may be true, but Oroua played four emergencies on that day. There was a selector, Mr. Clevely, present. As far as I know he made no inquiries about our players. I stood alongside him during the greater part of the game, and, although we know each other well, he did not ask me one question about the Oroua players. Surely, if we can defeat Manawatu B we are entitled to a few players in a Manawatu B team, yet in to-day’s issue I failed to discover the name of an Oroua piaver among the 38 players selected to represent Manawatu. To the best of my knowledge no Oroua player has represented Manawatu A since Tom Miles and he played in 1927 and perhaps in later years. Last year two players, McKenzie and Thompson, played in B games. The year before while Old Boys and Kia Toa were playing a final, a team picked from the rest defeated Oroua by one point at Kimbolton. The back line of that team was Edlin, Dermer, Finlay, Guild, Waugh and Mitchell. The forwards included Bill Powell and Bill Sullivan. (You will have the full team in your files.) As I say, this team defeated Oroua by one point, yet not a player from this union represented Manawatu in either A or B games that year. This, Sir, is how the M.R.U., at the behest of the N.Z.R.U., encourages football in the country districts. I could continue quoting similar examples until I crowded the war news out of your columns, but these few examples will suffice to show the Manawatu public of the fairmindedness of the M.R.U. selectors.—l am, etc., NOEL AMADIO.