FOOTBALL AND FISTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18711, 17 May 1924, Page 13

FOOTBALL AND FISTS.

UNSEEMLY ADELAIDE SCENES.

game ends in free FIGHT

INTERVENTION BY POLICE. [from our own correspondent.] SYDNEY. May 7. - The football season has opened vigorously in South Australia, where a match between the Victorian and South Australian railwaymen, at Prospect, ended in a free fight. Several such incidents occurred in different centres in the Commonwealth during last season, and people are coming to associate football matches with the presence of strong forces 'of police. Things for a time at the South Australian match looked very ugly, and but for the police intervention serious injuries to some of the. players would most likely have resulted. As it was, 6ome of the players carried permanent disfigurements when they left the field.

There were indications that trouble was brewing early in the third quarter of the struggle for the Nash Challenge Shield, of which the Victorians are holders. Possibly the fact that the visitors had considerable leeway to make up against formidable opponents was primarily responsible for some of the Victorian railwaymen • displaying unwarranted outbursts of feeling on the fields which culminated in fisticuffs.

There were four ox five of these unseemly incidents yi the second half. Schumacher, a bother of the . League player, was an innocent victim in the first occurrence. He w»s laid out for a minute, and rose with a. bloodstained face, the result of a swinging right from a who apparently desired to get "even' with someone. Toward the close of the game a Victorian unnecessarily charged a man, and up went two pairs of fists. The umpire succeeded in separating the pair, and quiet reigned for a few seconds, after which a further clash occurred. A number of players were seen in action. Some were jostling and endeavouring to separate the Infuriated players, and others Indulged in a free firfat. Trainers, policemen, and scores of barrackers rushed the field, and soon became intermixed with the players, and until the arrival of pohco re- | inf-orcements there was a general melee.