THE CHURCH AND SPORTS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 79, 15 November 1911, Page 6

THE CHURCH AND SPORTS.

SPORTS PROTECTION LEAGUE’S AIMS. (Per Press Association.) Christchurch, November 44. Considerable surprise is felt in Joe.,] sports circles regarding what is considered to be the extraordinary manifesto issued by the Auckland Ministers’ Association concerning the New Zealand Sports Protection League. The manifesto was brought under tho notice of Mr. A. Boyle, presid-mt of the local branch of the league, by a press reporter to-day, and Mr. Boyle was quite amazed at the ,v:olence and virulence of the attack made, an attack which was based on entirely wrong premises. “The sole object of the league,’" he declared, “is to protect and purify sport. It is absolutely untrue (o say that we are fighting for tho i"stiuition of the bookmaker, or ’hat wo desire tho extension of the totalisator, or that we would multiply the number of racing days in the year. If the secretary of the northern branch caused the ministers to believe what they seem to believe in their manifesto, then he was altogether exceeding his duties and claiming for tho league objects which it does not profess, and has no need to profess. The league has nothing whatever to do with the claims attributed to it by the Auckland ministers. The league docs not stand for the bookmaker nor an increase in the days of racing, nor for tho extension of the totalisator, nor for the liquor interests. t Inis nothing to do with any of those. The league, moreover, is against all public exhibitions of sport on Sundays, but it believes that each individual has the right to spend part of the hours of Sunday in harmless amusement, provided that by doing so he gives no offence to tho community in general.’