THE ALL BLACKS

Southland Times, Issue 19458, 24 January 1925, Page 9

THE ALL BLACKS

CONCLUSION OF THE TOUR.

An Unparalleled Record.

VICTORIOUS ALL BLACKS. TOUR OF WALES. PRINCIPALITY OVERWHELMED. In the following, N. P. McGregor describes the All Blacks’ matches against Wales and Llanelly. Although the young ex-South-lander modestly omits all reference to himself, it may be mentioned that McGregor was an outstanding success in this match against Wales. H. Munro, another player well known in Southland, refers to the game in short but expressive terms: “It was no parlour game,” he remarks. ‘‘New Zealand gave them what they asked for. The two Brownlies, Richardson, McGregor, Nicholls and Nepia were the pick of the All Blacks —Nepia greatest of them all.” NEW ZEALAND v WALES. AT SWANSEA, NOVEMBER 29. 50,000 SPECTATORS. A perfect day for football: no sun, ground in marvellous condition considering the amount of rain that had fallen. On Wednesday and Thursday it rained heavily most of the time; alson on Friday night. However, the sandy nature of the soil left the ground in a soft condition and it was ideal for us. Rain began to fall shortly after commencement of the second half, and made the ball slippery for a very short period, but the ground became dry again in no time. The game was not exactly a spectacular one. Wales played 8 backs and 7 forwards, one of the latter being practically a wing forward. Thus, if our seven forwards (the largest forward pack we could put in practically) could not get the better of their opponents it would not say much for us. Our forwards did play well, and though we were pressed hard for about a quarter of an hour at the beginning of the second spell, they (New Zeaalnd) had the better of the game. It was extremely hard, and Wales started off- with’ a bang, and played vigorously. Needless to say they were given as much as they wanted. The crowd booed us repeatedly but this did not influence us the least.

The backs played well and were sure in their handling. Nicholls put over a penalty early in the game, from a fair position. ’ He had his knee hurt before half-time and 1 was badly handicapped, otherwise much • more would have happened. (He will be off for one or two matches). Mill played well and it was good judgment on his part in passing as he did to Svenson from a scrum near their line for Svenson to dive over. Svenson played safely —he is a hard man to stop from scoring when he gets within 5 yards of the line. Steel played his best game so far on this tour. He showed great dash and was very unlucky in not getting at least one try. On this occasion he beat several players and forced down. The referee had blown his whistle and put ! his hand up and given a try, but the touch j line judge, L. Simpson, New Zealand., had ‘his flag up, for Steel had just gone over I the touch line, and the try was disallowed. I Steel made a great save during the game | in coming right across from the opposite ; wing and putting Rowe-Harding into touch ! within a yard from our line. The West j Coaster is a hard man to stop and he has ’ a great art of bumping his man off. Cooke played much better in this game than in his last few. He made the best out of the opposing backs’ mistakes, and on occasions was able to turn defence into attack, on account of their faulty passing. Nepia played a great game at full back, one of his best. He kicked well, tackled well and stopped many dangerous rushes. His fielding was grand to watch—he is a hard man to stop. The forwards played well, Brownlie brothers being in the limelight. C. Brownlie played his best game to date and he and his brother were the outstanding ones. Irvine, Masters, Richardson and Cuppies also played well. Parker did not show up so much, but did some great spoiling work which was very useful, seeing they had eight backs. He was on their five-eighths very quickly to smother. He played a strict wing-forward game in the first half, but in the second went on the wing, Svenson coming in centre. We were fortunate in winning the toss for we had the wind with us in the first spell—a big advantage. In the second spell it rained slightly, and the wind dropped a little and became more of a cross wind. The great crowd of 50,000 gave us their usual hymns, etc., as in 1905, but it had little influence on us. They were singing for some considerable time before the commencement of the game, the crowd being very much worked up. This they showed by hooting the referee and us on many occasions, without any reason. It was hard—hard in all senses. A lot of us are feeling sore, but it was more than worth it. We were well satisfied with our win and did not expect such a big margin. Dailey was to have played had it been wet, Mill being picked subject to weather conditions. Johnson, W T ales full back, played a very safe game and kicked with much length j and accuracy. This was his first big game 1 in this position and he made a great job of it. „ . , . Wales made the biggest of mistakes in playing eight backs. They took our forwards too cheaply and this had much to do with their defeat. The score of 19 points was very appropriate, don’t you think? One point for each I year we have waited. NEW ZEALAND v. LLANELLY. Ground in rotten condition, very heavy and tiring. Ball was not greasy at allmud stuck to it and made it exceedingly j heavy. 20,000 spectators. No sun, little i wind. I It was a very poor exhibition of football, one of our worst so far. From the kickoff we nearly scored. A passing rush began from their kick off, forwards and backs handling, ended in Cooke cross-kicking over the line. Richardson, following up fast, just missed scoring. The first few minutes of play gave one the impression that we would win easily, but such was not the case. New Zealand had the better of the first spell but in the second they were pressed most of the time. Hart’s score was a very lucky one—a bad kick by Llanelly’s half, who had received from a line-out near half-way. He kicked straight across the field, .Hart gathering on the full right on half-way. He showed wonderful speed and beat the fullback to score behind the posts —a great try. In the second try, M. Brownlie received from the loose and passed to C. Brownlie, who missed his pass, Dailey gathering the ball and passing to Svenson, who beat two men to score at the corner. Nepia failed. —B—o.8—0. The scores were B—o at half-time and the final was B—3. Llanelly scored from a line-out near halfway. Llanelly threw in to the front man who passed back to the wing three-quarter, who raced down the fine to Nepia whom he bea t and scored at the corner. Finch played against us in Wales where he did not show up at all. Playing for Llanelly he showed a lot of speed and his score was a very good effort. The New Zealand forwards played a very poor game, but were handicapped by the

condition of the ground. M. Brownlie, Richardson and C. Brownlie were the best on the day. In the second half the NewZealand forwards had the worst of the game. In their own twenty-five they showed bad judgment in passing the ball back to the backs, and this continually got them into trouble.

The backs played well but were mostly on the defensive. Dailey as badly pressed by Llanelly’s forwards, and had a hard time. Paewai played well at first fiveeighth, and he and Cooke were the best of the backs, barring Nepia. Nepia did a lot of saving.and as usual kicked well. Brown played solidly all through. Hart and Svenson both played good games. The backs got going very little and had it been a dry day New Zealand would have won easily. A most exciting game and New Zealand were hardly pressed when in the “dip” at our end. This “dip,” from which Llanelly have won many matches, is not noticeable from the stand, but. thre is a distinct down hill, and thus when Llanelly were attacking in this corner, they had New Zealand playing slightly up hill. A Llanelly player informed one of our company that they played to this corner, for they had won so many matches from it. We were lucky in getting out of Wales without a defeat for we had a great deal to contend with. One consolation we have, is that we are the only international side that has gone through Wales without a defeat. I was supposed to play in this match, but did not as my leg had not recovered from a knock I received in the Wales match—Paewai played in my place. Our forward did not dribble enough and this is one thing the forwards on this side can teach them. Cooke, with his pace, often turned defence into attack, and was noticeable for a number of dashes —once he was unlucky in not scoring. CRITICISM OF TEAM. AN UNFORTUNATE REMARK VIGOROUS PROTEST FROM PROMINENT SPORTSMEN. LONDON, December 12. It is very satisfactory to note that Brigadier-General R. J. Kentish, so well-known as the Director of Physical Training during the war, has given a word of advice to all those writers who seem to be obsessed with a desire to demonstrate their own efficiency as critics by taking exception to the play of the New Zealand Rugby players. A correspondent, signing himself F. Brodie Lodge, succeeded in a letter to the ! Sporting Life and Sportsman in making a j statement in the worst possible taste. The subject was the selection of the English team to play against the All Blacks on I January' 3. “Who is going to take the 'place kicks?” the correspondent asks, “and I thus reap the due and proper benefit from • the considerable number of penalties which i a strict referee will almost certainly have to give against the All Blacks? Would it be very unwise, do you think, to experiment with H. L. V. Day in the full-back position ?” It is a particularly unfortunate statement to appear in a well-known sporting paper, and most people will derive satisfaction from Brigadier-General Kentish’s protest. “May I protest in the strongest terms possible,” he says, “against the letter appearing in your issue under the name of Mr F. Brodie Lodge, on the subject of the selection of the English fifteen against the AU Blacks. It would be bad enough if such a suggestion appeared in the Press some time before our matches with, say, one or other of the three countries which go to make up the United Kingdom. It is a hundred times worse when it is made with reference to one of our Dominion teams, the members of which are our guests, and I feel perfectly sure that every fair-minded Englishman will feel as incensed with the manner in which Mr Brodie Lodge has gone out of his way to insult our kinsmen, as well as they and their friends must feel to-day on reading his letter in your journal. “And do you think that the publication of such a letter, and the controversy which it must arouse, to say nothing of the ill-feeling it probably engenders amongst the players, helps either to the cementing of the ties which should bind the Mother Country with her Dominions, or to the improvement and betterment of the great game of Rugby football? W. W. WAKEFIELD’S OPINION. “The writer may say that, in making the suggestion, he was only animated by the desire to see England win, and that a good place-kicker in the side would be a great asset. Yes, certainly, a good placekicker is always a great asset, and let our men practise hard to improve their placekicking. But do not let them start out to practise for the sinister reason which has prompted Mr Brodie Lodge to write his letter. “Regarding the fairness, or otherwise, of the methods adopted, and of the criticism of those methods which has appeared in the Press, it may not on this occasion be out of place to quote the English captain’s views given to the Press a little over a week ago. W. W. Wakefield stated then: “They are a wonderful side, and I never enjoyed a game more than that at Twickenham. I never came across any of that deliberate foul play about which the critics have had such a lot to say, neither did I observe any of those cases of deliberate obstruction. The game appealed to me as a healthy and vigorous contest between men who knew their game, and I should like to get more of it in club football.” “It not it then time those charges and insinuations against our guests came to an end?” “SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERE LAST WEEK.” Another correspondent to the same journal says: “Your action in publishing General Kentish’s letter vindicating the All Blacks will be appreciated by all those who wish to preserve the British reputation for sportsmanship.” The correspondent takes objection to a remark by “Touch Judge,” which, he says, is typical of English criticism: “I am convinced that England 1924 will defeat the All Blacks if the reguar members of the invincibe side are as good as they were twelve months ago.” “We will be told,” says the correspondent, “that if the AU Blacks had come last season they would have been beaten. This sort of escape from unpalatable facts was strikingly exemplified after the London match, when all sorts of insinuations were made to cover up the defeat. Fortunately, they received short shrift from Mr W. w’. Wakefield, who knows better than any critic whether in fact the All Blacks do, or do not, play fair Rugby. “With Scotland going out of the way to insult the visitors, and English critics saying anything deprecatory that they can invent, I think it is about time an attempt’ was made to show the New Zealanders that they are at least as welcome in our midst as they were when they fought by the side of our men in the war.”

THE LONG DAY CLOSES.

THEIR STRENGTH AND WEAKNESSES. (By “On-side Mac.”) Having won their two matches in France amidst the generous plaudits of the volatile Frenchmen, the All Blacks have returned to the scene of their earlier and more extensive triumphs on British soil to receive the felicitations of the British sporting world headed by that prince of sportsmen, the present heir to the Throne. Their tally of unbroken successes has now reached 30 matches, which sets a record which may possibly never be beaten, even by a greater team than this finp combination, because to achieve such a result is as much due to a combination of circumstances as to a standard of play of surpassing excellence. The 1924 All Blacks have been distinguished as a sound combination rather than by the individual brillance of their famous predecessors. Despite arguments to the contrary, the weight of evidence goes to show that the present side were not a strong “wet weather” team, the majority of their hardest games being played under conditions which militated against them producing the sound team work, reversal of the direction of play, and sectional passing bouts by forwards and backs in close combination—the presence of the packmen in these attacks being brought about by quick breaking from the scrum such as Richardson and the Brownlies prefer, but which is a serious matter on a ground where the scrum should serve as the basis of protection for the backs, and a cover for the rearguard to swing into action at a necessarily reduced rate of speed. Before the All Blacks left for England, it was pointed out in these columns that the weakness in the play of the forwards was their foot and scrum work, some of the best forwards being too keen to get out amongst the backs, while in ball control and dribbling on a greasy turf they were a good deal behind the standard set by many previous combinations which had left these shores. These, weaknesses were always in evidence to a greater or less extent during the tour, and in the earlier and middle stages, the scrum work seems to have given serious food for thought; so much so that the All Black forwards were under a cloud, and the Welshmen thought they could beat the New Zealanders in front. Fortunately, however, the big forwards rose to the occasion and overwhelmed the opposition, giving a taste of the quality which led to them being described before leaving Maoriland as a greater side man for man than the 1905 pack. From this time on, the team seems to have reached its maximum of effectiveness, and the victory of 14 men against England will go down in football history as one of the greatest Rugby games of all time. The London Sporting Life was surprisingly fair in its comments on this match, and it was a grossly biassed view of the position which persisted in a comparison with the Welsh match of 1905, and the contention that the losers were unlucky not to have won. There is no comparison between these two games, and it simply shows a lack of knowledge of the elementary principles of the game to ignore the effects of a side losing one of its best forwards in the first few minutes of play, necessitating hurried alterations in front, causing disorganisation at a critical stage, and crippling Parker’s orilliant roving game which has been such a feature of this tour. Fourteen men beat England—let London Sporting Life and other critical English journals answer that argument if they can! NEWS ABOUT THE TEAM. The following extracts are from a letter 1 written about the middle of December by I N. P. McGregor to the writer—" The strain 1 of an unbeaten record is having its effect, and a holiday and a good rest will do us good. We have got 10 days after our match against Hampshire and many of us are going up to Scotland, Mill, Paewai, Donald, Harvey, Munro and myself for certain ; and I believe there are others going too. Mr Dean and Hart are going across to Berlin by ’plane. We are having a great time, but I won’t be sorry when we leave for New Zealand. We are all looking ' forward to our trip across Canada—we hear that we may be spending a few days at i Winter Sports somewhere Although he played at Warwickshire, Harvey did not , play against Combined Services. He is not [ right and I don’t think he can be picked against England. It is hard luck for him—he has been so unfortunate in the way of sickness and was the makings of one of our best forwards. Robilliard is also unlucky in not getting more games here—he did not play too well at Oxford, and has not had a game since Met Arthur Kingsland (late of Invercargill Pirates Ist XV.) here the night before our match against Combined Services. Got quite a pleasant surprise when he dropped in at the hotel to see me. He went to the match and he said he enjoyed it very much —says, as we all do, that their half makes a good wing-forward.” THE STATISTICAL SIDE. Including the matches against Ireland, Wales, England and France on the present tour, New Zealand has played 74 international matches, won 59, lost 11, and | drawn four. The grand summary of i matches played by New Zealand representative teams is 176 played, 162 won, 11 lost and four drawn. By scoring 106 points on the present tour, M. Nicholls, of Wellington, joins a select few who have topped the century mark, the Wellingtonian now having a total of 146 points to his credit, nine of which are by tries and the rest by kicking, in which. Nicholls proved himself the All Blacks’ best try convertor and field kicker, although on the present tour the standard in this department was far from high. W. Wallace, “the admirable Crichton of the Rugby game,” during his distinguished career piled up 367 points (34 tries, 111 conversions and 13 field kicks). When the news of the All Blacks’ victory against England was flashed round the globe, a congratulatory telegram wafc despatched to the captain of the All Blacks by the Australian Eleven skipper, H. L. Collins, whose team at the same time were engaged in a cricket marathon with the Englishmen at Melbourne. i Although a goodly proportion of the All i Blacks saw service in the war, West and ! Badeley are the only two names that occur to mind as having played' against the French in the old Army days, and neither had a chance to renew actual playing acquaintance with the football grounds of la belle France during the present tour. Son White saw service in France, but did not start to play the game seriously until his return, and Richardson, Parker and the two Brownlies were in Mespotamia and Palestine. Having successfully tied a score of knots in the tail of the British lion, the AU Blacks went across the Channel in quest of the handful of feathers from the Chanticleer of France, says Christchurch Sun. Somehow . or other, one does not associate the French with the game of football, but the growth in Rugby’s popularity since the conclusion of the war—possibly due to the splendid demonstrations given by Army teams in, and out of, the war zone —has been phenomenal. Until 1920 the game was under the control of the Union des Societies Francaises des Sports Athletiques, the parent body of all branches of French sport. In that year a French Rugby Federation was formed, with a membership of 280 clubs. In 1921 this number had increased to 514; in 1922 to 845; in 1923 to 1095, and on April 30 of last year there were 868 affiliated clubs. All France is divided, for the purposes of Rugby, into 32 regions, which include occupied Morocco, Tunis and Algeria in Africa. English University teams from Oxford and Cambridge and players from the Royal Navy met provincial French teams last year, and a Paris University team | defeated a representative 15 from the Man- , Chester ’Varsity. In the International | Tournament of 1924, in which England, 1 Scotland, Ireland, Wales and France com- I peted, Taffy and Jules tied for ownership of the “wooden spoon.” The French reps, lost to Ireland o—6, to England 7—19, to Wales 6—lo, and beat Scotland (to the utter surprise of all Caledonia) by 12 points to 10.”

The team will leave to-day for Canada, where four matches wfll be played.