WHEN N.Z. BEAT WALES

Southland Times, Issue 19459, 26 January 1925, Page 9

WHEN N.Z. BEAT WALES

WONDERFUL SCENES. FIERCE TELLING CONTEST. MUSIC THAT DIDN’T DO THE TRICK. (Sunday Sun Correspondent.) LONDON, December 4. According to a dramatist who wrote in the time of the Stuart kings, music has charms to soothe a savage breast. There may have been a lot in it in his day, but it did not work last Saturday at the football match at Swansea. The experiment was worth trying, because the charm was supposed to have worked well enough 19 years ago, when Wales brought off the one and only defeat of the “original” All Blacks. That Wales intended to try the effect of music upon the enemy again was not concealed in the least. Welshmen knew they were in for a very stiff fight, with the odds strongly against them. They calculated that their team did not really have much of a chance, though they might possibly repeat their old triumph, if the way could be found to inspire them to heroic deeds as only a Welsh football crowd can inspire its men, and as only a Welsh team can feel that inspiration. Music was going to do the trick if anything would. So keen were they on the point that they were sorry this return match was to be played at Swansea instead of at Cardiff, where New Zealand had been conquered in 1905. Going down in the train we saw the shakings of the head and heard the croaking of the pessimists. Cardiff, they said, is one thing; Swansea is not the same. It appears that a massed crowd at Cardiff looks more menacing because it towers above the field of play, and seems to close right in upon it. The choir, so to speak, is more together. Swansea, we were told, spreads the crowd out farther from the football fray; choral singing is rather more in the broadcasting line. Not that the crowd would be thin, for, as everybody knew would be the case, the ground was filled to capacity, and the gates had to be shut. But the crowd would be at a greater distance from the touch and goal lines, and therefore would be heard on the field with less effectiveness. WONDERFUL SINGING. Really the singing, as singing, was all right. It was wonderful. Surely there is no other country in the world where a football crowd of fifty thousand can be found to sing in perfect time, with marvellous rhythm and blend. At an English’ Cup-tie, for instance, there is singing of a sort. The band strikes up the latest popular songs, and the best concerted effort is achieved by whistling the air. It is far easier to get the notes right if you whistle instead of sing, and you don’t have to know the words. In any case the effect is doleful and depressing, though it does give the crowd the feeling that it is enjoying itself and the Cup-tie. With the Welsh, the effect is that of a gigantic chorus. It is true the bandmaster conducts from the centre of the field, but only a nation with a real genius for singing could produce a scratch crowd of 50,000 and get it to mark every pause and strike every note as if it were a choir a few score strong at' a musical festival. A very large percentage of this crowd, perhaps more than half, do not lead lives that are cast in pleasant places. The green valleys and the mountain-tops with the sun rising over them for the benefit of Mr Lloyd George’s perorations will not be found where these football crowds congregate in Cardiff and Swansea, Neath and Llanelly. This South Wales region of coalmines, mineral dumps, and smelting furnaces is no pleasure resort. But it breeds men who can sing. The crowd sang hymns, and it sang not hymns by courtesy-title, but the sort that, in any other country, are heard only in the churches and Sunday schools. This crowd was not at Sunday school, and knew the match was not going to be any Sunday school picnic, not the nice sort of Sunday school picnic, anyway. Probably the explanation is that the crowd, being assembled on a great national occasion, was loosing its preliminary emotions in the way that came most naturally to it. Being highly wrought, it had to sing: and sing it did, wonderfully. “LAND OF OUR FATHERS.” The greatest item on the programme was left for the curtain-raiser. When the game was about to commence the band gave the signal for “Land of Our Fathers.” To a man, those fifty thousand bared their heads, and those who were lucky enough to be seated stood up. It is useless to attempt to picture a scene such as this; its significance was too deep. But it did explain why so many Welshmen had argued that the effect of that anthem should be worth several points to Wales in a football match. If the spectacle and the sound of that huge concourse, invoking the name of its Welsh ancestors in a fervent appeal to its fifteen Rugby champions, could not inspire them to fight to the death, nothing would. Those of us who were not Welsh could not help feeling sorry for the New Zealanders waiting their turn. But the first glimpse we had of the New Zealanders was enough to set our anxious minds at fest. They merely marched on to the field in Indian file as cool and matter of fact as you please. Even in their watery there was no extra touch of defiance; it was just the humdrum affair that they might have bestowed upon a cheap county team. Either they have no ear for music, or they had shut their ears to it. In their dark, rather dirty uniforms they looked terribly practical, most emphatically unmusical. Clearly the AH Blacks have no soul. That, also, might serve to describe the game they played. It was so severe, so unpoetical; Technically, it might be said that they were superior to Wales in every department of the game, with one exception. Forward play in the loose is the game these fiery Welshmen love. Rugged was the play. By common consent it was one of the hardest and most “willing” ever seen in Wales, where Rugby is nothing if not a “he-man’s” game. When a man was thrown he was thrown for good and all as far as that particular movement was concerned. There was one poor little Welsh half-back for whom fif-teen-stone All Black forwards had a particular weakness, and when they pounced on him to nip his passes in the bud he left a deep impression upon the soft, impressionable turf. He was a brave little chap, and if the Welsh Rugby Union had wanted to erect a bronze statue to perpetuate him they would have found excellent moulds for his 'figure from every angle upon the field of battle. As judges of the game of Rugby and exports in its finest pointe the South Welshmen have no superiors. A distinguished ex-player of the game from Sydney, who knows the crowds of Australia, New Zealand, and the British Isles, declares that the crowds of South Wales may be tough customers, but they do understand the game.