RUGBY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20620, 19 July 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

RUGBY.

RANDOM NOTES.

J!Y KOTARE.

Ivor Brown, one of our most virile and graceful essayists, considers that the modern Englishman invests the games ho loves with a seriousness and sombreness and gloom that do not mark his attitude to his work—when he can get work. He is not content to amuse himself. He lifts his sport into what bo deems are its higher relations. He is bent on finding its moral significance. Ho imagines the vast international and imperial implications involved in an ingenious reporter's discovery that at a recent jollification in a night club " the popular Snort girls threw a brace of grape fruit at Toni, the esteemed master of cuisine and ceremonies. A gravo moral issue would immediately be raised and archbishops would opine that tossing grape-fruit is or is not a symptom of national decadence."

This would bo the signal for the marshalling of the imperialistic phalanx. Throwing grape-fruit becomes a symbol of imperial unity. It is one of the means of demonstrating that trade should be within the Empire, " and of driving homo the vital point that trade follows the flapper." So a prank that in other days would lead (o Old Bailey leads the serious modern to the New Testament. Ho suggests that one of the ways of brightening up the cricket test would be to substitute Harry Tate at the bowling crease for the redoubtable Maurice. Why. in the name of Davy Jones and the rest of the English saints, can't wo keep our eve on the hall and leave moral and political significances to the issues that matter. It is simply the ancient gibe at England's moral obsession brought up-to-date. TJnfccnoured and Unsung. In another essay he expresses his wonder that Rugby football, " the best game to watch," has never figured adequately in literature. Neville Cardus thrills to a game of cricket as Ernest Newman to Wagner or Beethoven. He sees it as one of the greatest of the fine arts, an exquisite harmony of colour and form and movement. In tho hands of the master the bat becomes a worthy substitute for Rembrandt's brush or Paderewski's piano. With it he weaves his patterns of perfect beauty and lifts the artist soul to commune with the stars. So Cardus' cricket articles move from one lyrical ecstasy to another. But Rugby has no poets. 1 havo gone through the anthologies of sport on my shelves and I cannot find that football has ever stirred the soul of even a fifthrat 3 poetaster. Fox-hunting is always breaking into literature; horse-racing has a multitude of interpreters; fishing has to its credit a long list of classics; golf, swimming, tennis, even fives and hockey have their hymns of praise. But where are the singers of the toiling pack, the elusive five-eighths, tho brilliant threequarter ? It is not easy to find a satisfactory reason. It is possible that the emotions roused by a good Rugby game are not readily recaptured. The game moves so swiftly; hope and rapture and disgust follow one another in such rapid succession that tho final impression is a confused medley without form and void. The poet is said on high authority to depend on emotion reproduced in tranquillity. When the game is lost or won the only emotion left is usually gratification or disappointment—vague feelings that cannot revive again the hectic tensions of the swaying fortunes of the battic. The fiercer the fire the sooner it burns out, and the black ashes cannot be lit again.

Spectators. Still Ivor Brown goes ncnr disproving his own thesis, " How to some probing psycho-analyst, who muttered ' Hugger ' in one's ear would one react? Jn thoughts of beauty, perhaps, and visions of a threequarter line ribboning across the field on a radiant afternoon. Thcie would bo memories of the wondrous Poulton, the licet and flaxen, with station like the herald Mercury, the incarnation of sidespringing elusiveness, and yet so selfless in his passion for the game that every three-quarter lino he joined had a combination and a form indeed. Oilier visions would bring to life some pack of mighty forwards struggling in vain with beaten backs behind them and over towering up in their rushes like the imperious surge, yet like the surge eternally defied by some jutty fragment of defence." The same authority notes that invading teams from other parts of the British Isles find the chill decorum of on English Rugby crowd rather cramping to their style when they face England's chosen at Twickenham. At least if the players do not notice it the barrackers from afar soon lose their exuberance of partisanship and find themselves compelled to bid wild ecstasy adieu and conform to tho solemn ritual of the place. Your Englishman, says our essayist, loves best to sit like the gentleman in " The Mikado," in solemn silence. Sometimes lie is betrayed into a shout; he may recognise an especially gratifying feat of prowess by a discreet waving of his hat. But it is the rule of the game for the spectator that he must choke back both his agony and his delight. " Who ever may win at Twickenham, decorum never loses."

The Team. Wo have not been able to cultivate that Greek restraint in New Zealand. As a matter of fact we aro scarcely bound by tradition at all. We are prepared to act like Welshmen or Scots or Soccer fans if wo feel that way. And we do not even regard the traditional rules as sacrosanct Rugby may have become a religion with us but it has not developed a ritual. The individual can express himself as the impulse of the moment dictates, and the staidest citizen does not Jose face if he lets himself go. Hut the fact remains that it is passing difficult to recapture that first fine caroless rapture. Apart from the obvious kaleidoscopic quality of the rapidly changing scone of battle, apart from the swift succession of deed on deed,, emotion on emotion, one impression scarce made bofore another is driven homo on top of it, till the palimpsest is a mass of confused unintelligible markings, Rugby is above everything else a team game. The in dividual shines for his side. The best player on the ground, the man who has won the game for his side, may have not a single point to his credit on tho score sheet.

In cricket tho individual gets full credit for his achievements with hat and ball. li» goes down to posterity in the records A century hence men will rend of Braclman's innings at Lrteds in the third Test of 1930. A footballer's achievements cannot be assessed in figures. The individual is always merged in the team. Then the playing life of a footballer is necessarily short. Sometimes, by the timidity of selectors, it is unduly prolonged and he lags superfluous on the stage he onco adorned. A man may play first-class cricket for thirty years, and still be a public figure when old age is knocking at liis door. But in football nn Amurath succeeds as rapidly as Presidents in a Central American Republic. A few seasons in the fierce, white light that beats upon the international playing field, and then the inevitable relegation to the sideline.

Well, it all goes to make Rugby what mnnv of us are prepared to maintain till (he last whistle Mows, the finest game for vigorous youth to play, and for those whose youthful energy has passed, the finest game to watch.