FOOTBALL IN SCHOOLS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 22 December 1922, Page 2

FOOTBALL IN SCHOOLS

“TOO MUCH WEIGHT’’ AUCKLAND, Dec. 21. “I do not wish to decry football, but it certainly seems to carry too much weight to-day,” said Mr J. W. Tibbs last evening, in bis final annual review of the work of the Auckland Grammar School. He said that his attention was called lately b\* an enthusiast for the game to the fact that a large proportion of the Oxford University fifteen of today were from the Dominions —Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa — and that most of them were Rhodes scholars. The points of athletic excellence, of the candidate for the New Zealand Rhodes Scholarship, as reported in the daily papers, seemed generally to overshadow all other qualifications, and recently the doings of the successful ■Australasian ' candidate occupied half a column, the greater part of which was a,- glorification 'of his prowess in the football field. Mr Tibbs continued ; “Mr Rhodes, as I uriilerstand, founded his scholarships, not to strengthen the threequarter line of the Oxford University fifteen, but to give picked young men from the Overseas Dominions an opportunity of attending our greatest school of Imperial administration, with a view to bring the outlying possessions of the Crown into the closest possible touch with the heart of the Empire. Athletics may be made a strong bond of union with us, as Olympic Games were in ancient Greece, provided that the, spirit of professionalism is kept out as it certainly was among' the Greeks; but a mere sports’ representative of a Dominion is not likely to develop into a leader of Imperial thought, even after Oxford, where athletics are a snare not less than elsewhere; and election of such candidates to the Scholarship was not- contemplated by the founder. I claim the right to speak on this matter, for I was a member of the committee summoned by Mr Seddon which formulated the first regulations for the award of the Rhodes Scholarship. These were gradually, altered, not, as I think, wisely ; and I am of opinion that the lime has come when they should be reviewed.” ■