DR. THACKER TAKEN TO TASK

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 1, 23 March 1927, Page 1

DR. THACKER TAKEN TO TASK

THE LEAGUE TROUBLE i Special to THE SUN .) CHRISTCHURCH, Tuesday. Mr. OiShaughnessy, who was the official press representative with the New Zealand Rugby League team in England, joins issue with Dr. Thacker, patron of the New Zealand Rugby League, in a letter to the “Sun,” Christchurch, on the life banishment of the seven members. “Dr. Thacker is reported to have said at a meeting of the Addington League Club: ‘I support the penalty imposed on the seven members of the New Zealand League team. No matter what their reasons were, I support the penalty.’ Now in the first place I would ask the doctor is he quite satisfied, or rather certain, that the seven members did actually strike? 1 did not see the doctor at the ‘inquiry* held into the matter by the New Zealand Council; and again he has not heard yet any statement by the seven in question. But then he has already condemned them. “Now here is a perfectly innocent and straightforward question for the doctor: In the event of a court of law declaring that the seven had been suspended at an ‘inquiry’ that was out of order, or that they had been suspended without a fair hearing at all, or, as an alternative, that the charge on which they had been suspended ..as not true in fact, would the doctor accept the decision of the court or would he cling to his present opinion?”