RUGBY FOOTBALL.

Northern Advocate, 7 February 1925, Page 3 (Supplement)

RUGBY FOOTBALL.

VISITING BRITISH TEAM TO COME IN" 1926. Writing of the British Rugby team likely to visit Australia and New Zealand next year, the team to include Scotch as well as English, Irish, ant! Welsh players, "The Cynic" in the "Referee" says it has t'he sound of a very healthy project. If the organisers get together a truly representative party, embracing the best men in all the countries, the team might easily develop into a combination of rare strength, and by its achievements in New Zealand and Australia surprise Rugby Union enthusiasts in the Old Land. An ably-selected, keenly-organised, shrewdly-captained touring team develops astonishing combination on a tour of this character if ordinary good fortune smile upon it. A very welcome fact in this prospective tour is that Scotch players will be included. Official Scots are the Puritans of Rugby, and very hardsouled gentlemen But the Scots in sport are great fellows, and the colonial Scottish will be delighted beyond words if some of their kith, join in with their ruggedness and pep to make this team thoroughly representative of t'he Old Land. We do not forget tßtat rare type of forward, the late D. R. ; Bedell Sievright. He was a dour sort of chap, but a really wonderful player, after the style of the great Australian and New Zealand forwards, a man with I a forward's strength and ruggedness, J and a wing three-quarter's cleverness. He was of the Frank Burge, Charles Seeling type, but as these two differed, Iso "he differed from them. We will see j more men like Darkie Sievright, but X never expect* to see another forward like Frank Burge. WHAT'S IN A NAME. There is a. good deal in a name, despite what William Shakespeare says to the contrary. When the present All Blacks dubbed their wing-forward as a half-back, no doubt their inspiration was a result of the following written by the late Dave Gallaher, the | famous captain of the 1905 All IHe wrote: "The wing-forward's task j for a variety of reasons is a very thankless one, and it was never more thank-. . less or really unpleasant, than in the case of our tour through Great Britain. . . We cannot help believing that, if when we first came over we had reliquished this name (wing-for-ward), and simply called "-Our winger a h&lf-back, there would have been little or no objection to Mm. As we called him a wing-forward, it was taken for granted that he was pSrt of the scrum, and this mistakken idea was never eradicated."