RUGBY AT EDEN PARK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20977, 14 September 1931, Page 8

RUGBY AT EDEN PARK.

The football match played at Eden Park on Saturday had several notable features. New Zealand met the first Australian team to tour the country since 1913—Australian being used in contrast with New South Wales. The game was the first played for the trophy the GovernorGeneral, Lord Bledisloe, has presented for competition between the Commonwealth and New Zealand. The match proved in many features worthy of the occasion. The visitors had suffered a number of reverses before facing this test match. According to all reports they had been unfortunate in the South, conditions as well as the luck of the game having been against them. On Saturday they came into their own as regards both weather and the state of the ground. The result shows the earlier comment did not flatter them, for the issue of the match was in doubt up to the very end, and much in the run of the play suggests that New Zealand was fortunate, if not actually in winning, at least in winning by the margin shown. Had the All Blacks not possessed a brilliant fullback, R. G. Bush, and had he not been conspicuously successful on the day at goalkicking, a different story might have been told. But in football, as in many other things, there is little to be gained by speculating on the "might have been." There is nothing doubtful about the gallant and spirited game the visitors played, a game that explains the popularity Australian Rugby sides have enjoyed in Britain and elsewhere abroad. Though Rugby football has not the same hold in the Commonwealth that it has in New Zealand, it is claimed to be growing in strength and appeal there. The value of competition with New Zealand teams has always been freely acknowledged, a factor justifying the hope that there will be many more contests for the trophy presented by the Governor-General, and played for on Saturday for the first time.