FOOTBALL.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 3 October 1907, Page 1

FOOTBALL.

THE ENGLISH NORTHERN RUGBY UNION. THE ALL BLACK PROFESSIONALS. The following fixtures have been arranged for the New Zealand profession al football team in its tour of the Northern Counties of England : — October 9 — Bramley. Oct. 12— Hoddersfield. October 16 — Widnes. October 19 — Broughton Rangers. Oct. 23— Wakefield Trinity. Oct. 26— Leeds. Oct. 30— St. Helen's. November 2 — Unallotted Nov. 6 — Keighley. Nov. 9 — Wigan. Nov. 13 — Barrow. Nov. 16— Hull. Nov. 20— Leigh. Nov. 23 — Oldham. Nov. 27 — West Lancashire. Nov. 30 — Dewsbury and Baf'iey December 4 — Swinton. Dec. 7— Rochdale Hornets. Dec. 11. — Runcom. Dec. 14— Halifax. Dec. I&— Yorkshire. Dec. 1 - 21 — Warrington. Dec. 25 — Hunslet. Dec. 28— Salford. January I—Wales.1 — Wales. Jan. 4— Hull Kingston Rovers. Jan. B—Cumberland.8 — Cumberland. Jan. 11— England. Jan. 18 — Lancashire. Jan. 25 — Northern Union.

Thousands of Americans, says a New York correspondent, are reported as being more or less stranded in London — not in the financial sense, but simply because of the limited accommodation of even the gigantic ocean liners. More than 50,000 American tourists arrived in England in the months of May, June and July, and they all wish to go back at about the same date — a month hence, or six weeks at the most. All day long

the steamship offices are besieged, but the fiily hope held out to the anxious applicants is that some of the present holders of first-class berths may remain a little longer, and that transfers of tickets may thus be arranged. Secondclns'; ticket-holders are experiencing tho sunn* difficulties as thor.e who have firstclass return tickets. The big new Cunarder Lusitania is to start on her maiden trip to New York in three weeks' time, and the great trrbine steamer is already booked to v. iUiin a fraction of her cabin capacity. All available accommodation on tho other Cnnard liners for September is br.ciked, all the North German liners will he full until early in October, the same state of things existing where the steamers of the White Star line and the HamburgAmerican line are concerned, to say nothing of the other important shipping companies who have a large tiavellmg public to cater for. Many r.f tha American visitors do not take return tickets when they leave their own conntry for a European tour, as they dislike. the necessity of being tied to a certain date when there may still remain much to bo seen and done— a position -which is intolerable to them. So the traveller prefers to take "pot luck" and the result is that that all who have been ar living at intervals during a space of three or four months, try to get back to America in the space of one month. And when their desire cannot^be fulfilled there are many "weeps. The bookings by the Orient, the F. and U. and the other shipping lines to Australia this autumn are exceedingly heavy, and many New Zealand-bound passenC ers have been obliged to take anything—or nothing (more often the latter)—a few stray solitary cabins here and there being all that has been available • and I hear the same state of I things exists where the direct steamers to New Zealand are concerned.