FOOTBALL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18022, 22 February 1922, Page 9

FOOTBALL.

UNDER LEAGUE RULES. '

DEATH OF MR. J. CLIFFORD. Advice has been received by the president of the New Zealand Rugby, League, Mr. D. W. MoLoan, of the death in England of Mr. John Clifford, one of the managers of the British Northern Union teams, which toured Australia and New Zealand in 1910 and 1914 Mf. Clifford, who was accompanied in 1914 by his wife and sou. wis much respected by Australian and New land League offioialß, both a 9 o. sportsman and a man. Mr. Clifford, who represented the Huddersfield Club on the committee of the Yorkshire senior competition when the broak#way from the Rugby Union took place in the summer of 1895, was, says ft writer in the Yorkshire Evening News, OBiJ of those Yorkshire uportsmen who decided that, aa things had come to such a pass iu the county, it was more honourable to resign from the Rucby Union than to continue a policy of subterfuge and deceit. "No one who knew Mr. Clifford, and who knows others of the founders of Northern Unionism like Mr. Joe Piatt and Mr. J. H. Smith, has ever doubted the sincerity of thoso great revolutionists. The attempt to limit professionalism to payment for broken time wa.«i doomed to failure, just as was the subsequent effort to make every lootball playor a bona-fide workman, but the struggle mado by the great old sportsmen of Yorkshire and 'Lancashire to enforce these principles was clear evidenco that the coming of professionalism was not a matter of choice, but of necessity." The New Zealand Rugby League has sent to the English authorities a letter of condolenoe and sympathy to bo forwarded to Mrs. Clifford.