RUGBY SEASON CONCLUDES.

Otago Witness, 1 June 1910, Page 61

RUGBY SEASON CONCLUDES.

THE NEW ZEALAND LESSON, {From Oub Special Cobbespondent.) LONDON, April 8. Captain the Hon. Southwell Fitz Gerald, in his review of the Rugby season in the Throne and Country, makes certain references which will be read with interest in the Dominion. .He say6:—:"We have politics by revolution, and now we are having revolution in Rugby football. Mark you, we first noticed revolution in Rugger as far back as 1905, when the New Zealander showed us how to make our game attractive, and how at the fame moment to thrash our opponents. Rugby 20 or 30 years ago was a lugubrious-business as compared with the game of to-day. Heaviness iii every sense of the word was its component part. The player with strength and weight was the Rugby ideal. The New Zealanders revolutionised all this; they showed us (though we are only now assimilating their lesson) that the player with pace, who used his brains at the same time as he did his pace, was the essential of Rugby. KEEPING THE BALL ON THE MOVE. " But what is more important (and what has pat been grasped by all classes of Rugby), they demonstrated to us that a match winning factor, and an enormous asset of attractiveness in Rugby, is the point of constantly keeping the ball upon the move. By this I mean keeping the ball in the field of play, and, avoiding all the touch-finding, which is, in a great many sides, 6nch a considerable portion of their Rugby. Personally, I regard the amount of touch-finding which is indulged in, in the same light as that "sporting " trick, at Association, of kioking out. And in a great many instances touch-finding is done with the same intention of kicking out—namely, that of waiting time and endeavouring to sit on a lead. " The New Zealanders eschewed it almost entirely, which is the chief reason, with the addition of always having the ball on the move, that they nearly always beat their opponents by large scores. I think there are few who have realised this, and I em certain there are still fewer who have as yet thought that these are the prime reasons why the Harlequins have made such large scores against many of their opponents. Leicester, Northampton, Oxford, Gloucester, Devon, and Albion have all learned the lesson of keeping the ball on the move; they have only to cultivate the art of keping it in play to win by large scores also. THE MORAL. " England beat Scotland by these tactics. We all know the Scoteh style of play is to use the touch line as much as possible. The Englishmen, under the captaincy of J. G. G. Birkett, bewildered their opponents by always having the ball on the move; they avoided the touch line and they played the ' Harlequinade ' which has been so successful at Twickenham. My point is that I don't care what club or i rite mat ions.l side play the game I indicate, they are bound to be successful because it is the coming Rugby, and the frame which makes points for its side. Had we, 20 or 30 years aero, the forethought thus to enliven and brighten up Rugby, Association would never hold the place it has now in England. But in these days rugger to the ordinary spectator was a dull, lethargic struggle of weight and strength against weight and strength. Doubtless interesting to the stodgy players of those days, but boring to the lookers-on. If one asks to-day the player of decades ago, who since then has been »• constant attendant at Rugby, which is the better game, that of hi*; time or that of now, his answer is invariably the same—Give me the game where brains and nace can hold their own against weight and strength !"