A RUGBY REVIVAL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23382, 26 June 1939, Page 10

A RUGBY REVIVAL

The Auckland Rugby Union's scheme of playing its senior competition in two divisions and promoting at the end of the first round the two leading teams of the second division has succeeded this year beyond expectations. There were indications earlier in the season of a marked improvement in the standard of local club Itugby, but during the last three weeks the appearance in the first division of the two promoted clubs, Suburbs and Otahuhu, has provided followers of the game with the dramatic elements of a revival. The young players in both teams have taken their advancement in status as a challenge to play virile and attractive football, scorning the safety-first tactics of some of the wiseacres and demonstrating that the game of Rugby, irrespective of the "kick into touch" rule and the vexed question of scrum formation, can still be made a spirited contest and a thrilling spectacle. Both Suburbs and Otahuhu have appeared on the last two Saturdays as "giant killers" —Suburbs with a victory over Grammar and a draw with Ponsonby and ! Otahuhu with its defeat of Marist, the leading team in the competition. But the actual results do not matter so much as the manner in which those results have been achieved. No more inspiring football could be witnessed than that which the Suburbs team has provided on two successive appearances. The long, swift pass, the sweeping dribbling rush with a whole pack of forwards resolutely on the ball, the deadly low tackle that brings a racing threequarter crashing to earth—all these have been revived by players who a few weeks ago were virtually unknown. With a maintenance of this standard, the game in Auckland must regain traditional heights and the newcomers to senior ranks, whatever their ultimate fate may be against more experienced players, are to be congratulated.