FOOTBALL IN JAPAN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 21 March 1936, Page 7

FOOTBALL IN JAPAN

OTAGO PLAYER’S IMPRESSIONS

LIKELIHOOD OF RETURN VISIT

After a four weeks’ tour of Japan with the New Zealand University Rugby football team, two Otago students, Messrs 0. Chapman and S. W., Simmers, returned to Dunedin.

Mr Chapman, in an interview with a “Daily Times” reporter, said that the New Zealanders did not play very good football on the tour. They were too lavishly entertained to keep properly fit. They were continually attending dinners in their honour; they were taken on extensive sightseeing tours, including visits to temples and factories and other points of interest. Moreover, the type of food did not agree with them, and they could uot keep in training to the extent that was necessary. All the players thus suffered considerably from their lack of physical fitness and could not produce the football of which they were capable. “Rugby football is almost a religion with the Japanese students,” Mr Chapman said. “They take it up with a thoroughness that is a feature of the Japanese character in all branches of life. • The result is that the Japanese University teams are wonderfully fit. At all the universities they practise solidly for two hours a day, and at Meijii University they put in no fewer than four hours a day. The Japanese students have fixed ideas on what is expected of them. They feel that they must play the game to the utmost of their ability or they would be letting down their college.” The result was, .Mr Chapman continued, that the team-work was amazing and their passing was the best he had ever seen. It was wondei'ful and an education to all the New Zealanders. The Japanese teams, however, sadly lacked individual initiative and brilliance. It was his opinion, as well as that of other members of .the team, that the New Zealand football public would find much to interest it in the methods employed by a Japanese side. With that end in view tentative arrangements had been made for a representative University team from Japan_ to visit the Dominion in four years’ time. Such a tour, he considered, should prove an unqualified success.