SHOULD RUGBY FOOTBALL BE ABOLISHED?

Otago Witness, Issue 1917, 17 August 1888, Page 27

SHOULD RUGBY FOOTBALL BE ABOLISHED?

The following letter appeared in Titbits : — " Dear Sir, — I think it is time the above question—three deaths in the last few days- -should be discussed. Every week sees recorded in the columns of the press an accident of some kind, very often a fatal one, occurring in the cburse of a football match under Rugby rules. Surely a struggle in which muscle, weight, and ferocity are the chief, if not the only, factors, in which those taking part have to face the likelihood of a horrible death or painful mutilation, cannot be considered as a game. . Why should the laws of the country'and the public censure forbid prize fighting and yet countenance ; Riigby football ? The elements in each contest are the same, with oaly this difference : that; the restrictive conditions under which" a prizd fight takes place preclude any possibility "of the combatants seriously injuring each other. Ido not wish to say anything against the lovers of Rugby football, but certainly a stranger seeing a Rugby'team at the conclusion of a"match might well be forgiven if he imagined he saw a band of savages, inflamed with animal passions and dangerous to society. The thing is getting too serious, and public opinion should speak out before any more young and valuable lives are sacrificed to this modern Moloch.— Yours, Old-fashioned Sport."