BILLY CAN MAIL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26350, 3 January 1947, Page 4

BILLY CAN MAIL

DAVIS CUP REPORTS POOR PRESS FACILITIES (F.0.0.C.) SYDNEY, Dec. 31. The news that the American players Schroeder and Kramer had won the Davis Cup from Australia in 1946 was passed to an avidly waiting world via a weird arrangement of billy cans and rope. The Cup was won on the beautiful Kooyong courts in Melbourne, said to be the equal of any in the world, but the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia was apparently too concerned with watering and rolling to spare much time to arrange the despatch of journalists’ descriptions of the play'. A special cable office was set up underneath one of the grandstands. In the grandstands were journalists writing messages to be flashed overseas. Between the two stood an insuperable object—the Lawn Tennis Association rule that nobody shall leave a stand during play. This meant that the journalists could not send their copy boys racing down the aisles of the stand at will, so they came to an arrangement whereby a light wooden crane was built out from the back of the grandstand. From this crane hung a system of ropes and pulleys by which billy cans could be lowered to the ground near the cable office. When a journalist in the stand wanted to send a message he wrote it out, had it put in a billy can, sealed up with the lid, and so whirled on its way to his anxious readers. The fates, of course, saw to it that so elaborate a scheme broke down at exactly the wrong time and the result of the Cup got stuck halfway down when the billy can holding the messages caught in the wall of the stand. The billy can had to be tugged loose, pulled up. arid s.ent down a second time. About 100 newspaper and radio reporters covered the Cup and complained that they had had to fight the Lawn Tennis Association to get even a row of seats at the top of a stand. An American correspondent sarcastically asked: “Is this the place you Aussies call Woop Woop? ” He found that the L.T.A., economising on a band, played the “ Star Spangled Banner ” and “ God Save the King” with scratchy records over a loud speaker system, though the association charged £1 Is 7d for the cheapest public ticket and Stands to make more than £20,000 on the 1946 Cup.