THE PLAYGROUND.

Southland Times, Issue 19658, 7 October 1922, Page 12 (Supplement)

THE PLAYGROUND.

A yacht lake, which will cost £24.000. is to be constructed at Great Yarmouth, England. The game of lacrosse is reported to be making great strides in the United States and Canada. A puncture in the tyre of a motor vehicle bekunring to a Cheshire tradesman was found to have been caused by a gold ring Containing a diamond. The heavyweight amateur boxing champion of Australasia is one. Brancourt, who Stands 6ft lOin and weighs 17st 31b. In the soccer match at Christiania recently between Prague and Christiania, the respective capitals of Czechoslovakia and Norway, the Norwegians won by four goal' to three. There are forty yachts on the Christchurch Sailing and Power Boating Clubs register. The motor boat fleet at Redcliffs is also growing steadily and to encourage powerracing. the Club will held ocean launch races this season. Through the non-observance of an unwritten sporting law —never to aim at a rabbit which is on top of a hedge—an English sportsman accidentally received the charge from a gun shot by a companion j winch entered his shoulder and left eye, the wight of which he has lost. No fewer than 16.000 players took part in a whist drive 3t Olympia (Eng. • organ ised by a daily paper. The number is declared to be a record for whist drives and upwards of £lOOO was distributed in prizes, the first pnze being £5OO. Bull fights resulung in the death of the bulks are illegal in France, and there was a sequet to a fatal bull-tight in Bordeaux on the National Fete Day (July 14- recently, when four matadors were sent to prison for a day and fined 15 francs, anti the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ■was awarded 1000 francs damages. The roanacer of the ring was fined 1000 francs The entries for the Warrnambool to Mel bourne cycle road race total over 300. T J. Shaw who competed in 1902 holds the honour of being the oldest Warrnambool rider. Besides P. O’Shea and P. Hill of Canterbury, D. Wright of Reefton will make the trip to Australia to compete He has been granted £25 by the West I Coast centre of the N.Z. Athletic and Cycling Union and fix? New Zealand Union itself is contributing £lO. The game of "Beaver’’ recently revived by the Cambridge University students i< having an uproariously jxjpular existence in England, to the great annoyance of gentlemen with “ziff- ” As has been mentioned here on a previous occasion, the game conFists of spotting bearded men, points being ecored according to the length, breadth,®uml thickness of the "ziff.’’ A close con- . lest at Cambridge recently went to a young Modern who was well down on points, but I providentially managed to spot a ziff. in j which a couple of birds were beginning to j b’nki, so it raid. The arrow as a weapon is not yet ob- . solete. judging by a story which comes j from Croydon, England. Apparently two men attempted to break into a garage at hhirley Park Golf Club, but they were unsuccessful. They were heard by the cagetaker, who turned to his wife, and called j loudly, “Give me my revolver,’’ a weapon which he did not- (assess. The two men, preaunabiy alarmed, then cleared oft, but returned two hours later. In the meantime. Mr Brown, a director of the club, and another gentleman, who had both been warned, went down to the garage to keep watch, Mr Brown armed with a shot-gun, while his companion. who is .-killed in archery, took with him a bow and arorw. Hearing suspicious sounds coming from the garage, they turned on the light, and thereupon the two men bolted. The gentleman with the bow and arrow took a pot-shot at the fugitives, and one of them i- believed to have been struck in the back. A policeman who raw them running along the road tried to -top diem. i n was knocked down and injured, and the men got away. Children attending .he Aidershot elernenF tary schools are to be insured by the local Education Committee against accident, this move bemg the sequel to a claim for damages brought by i arents of a boy who fell and broke * aa arm in a school piayThe "Referee and Arrow” road race of 130 miles from Bathurst to Sydney was won by L. L. Post, off a h of 40 minutes. The race is regarded the greatest test in the worU for a road r.ue as the contestant, and descending mourn tins. A challenge made S. trench, a London bank clerk, forme.ly empioved at Mar- ■ • ■ ■ ■' - ■ nrimmiog, walking, running, and i.vrhng a r-ifgh h/swam ndh .. 3Gm£ 3l)sec. accomplished the wal in I kinin 20sec. the i run m «miti 3 .'irfc, ->«i the cycle run in four items was 59mm 25.-ec -35 sec under the hour. The King’s skill with the gun was a feature of the grouse shooting over the Duke of Devonshire’s moor- at Bohm. sport in unfavourable weather yielded over 400 brace ot birds, and the King was responsible for some o -His aim is steady as ever saui one who has watched the sport during pre vim-- viats of the King to Bolton Abbey. A monster cod. weighing 1281bs, length 4ft 10Un and ginh 4ft 7jm. was captured in the Murray River at Cobdogla I Australia. a few weeks ago. The previous record size for river cod was for a fish landed at Swan Reach which weighed 1231b5. Fans recently. The test was to guess the a well known French cyclist, Alavoine, over a circuit of 302 kilometres tn two days. Three competitors struck the correct figure 88.289. t t It is not unlikely that George Calza, the twentv-one-year-old wrestler who recently came back from Italy, will, within two vears, become the champion of the heavyweight division, says an American paper. The progress of the youngster has been remarkable. After defeating some of the lesser lights in the East, he marie Renato Gardini quit in two hours. Then he took on the former champion, Stanislaus Zbyezko and fought him to a draw. The Pole won the first fall, Calza took the second, and they struggled till well into the night without a result in the third effort without a fall. Lewis, Caddock, Stetcher, and the others will do well to, gird themselves, for the youngster will get *to them shortly. At Lowestoft (England) experiments have been carried out to discover how far and in what direction fish travel, times of migration, and sjieed of growth. Specimen fish are caught and measured. Weedy and sickly fish are thrown out. The best specii metis are set free, and a record is kept [ of the places where they are released. The fish are marked with two ebonite discs joined by a short silver wire. Hat fish are marked near the side of the fin and round fish like cod on the back fin or in a flap of loose skin at the gills. It was found that a 15in plaice travelled 175 Hides—from the East Coast to the English

Channel —in three months. Another, liberated at Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire, made a journey of 210 miles to St. Andrew’s Bayin eight months. Small plaice, taken from the Danish and Dutch banks, were liberated on the Dogger, and it was found that they grew more than three times as fast, as those left on the inshore banks. A prize-winner at an annual angler’s contest in England a month or two ago caught a fish which was regarded as a freak sjiecimen. According to the Yorkshire Post it weighed 152-oz., had a cod’s head, with beard like a barbel, spotted back like a trout, and an eel’s tail. According to a Berlin message, a judge is to witness a football match between teams of whom one is suing a Berlin newspaper editor for damages for libel in the paper’s description of a previous match. The winning team resented the report of the match, which will be played over again before the solitary spectator. The owner of a motor launch was fined , £5. with 3gs costs, at Kingston (Great Britain) recently, for causing such a wash that a punt moored on the Thames between Piatt's Island and the towing path was swamped and the contents of a tea-table on board swept into the river.

SPORTS AND PASTIMES.