League Champions for 1928

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 485, 15 October 1928, Page 6

League Champions for 1928

Marist Revives Stormont Tradition Great Tussle for End-of-Season Honours A LOXG League season was brought to a triumphant close at Carlaw Park on Saturday when Marist, on the crest of a wave of belated successes, beat the club competition winners, Devonport, in the annual champion of champions contest for the Stormont Shield. It was a fast and spectacular tussle all the way between two well-matched teams which made light of the heavy going, and opened out in flashing bursts of combined play at every opportunity.

When Jim Stormont dived across the Devonport line on Saturday in the big game at Carlaw Park for a well-earned try, the * minds of many veteran Leaguers went back eight years ago to a great game against the visiting Knglishmen in which the late W. Stormont was an outstanding figure. Thus did history repeat itself, and no one could have been more pleased than Mr. John Stormont, sen., donor of a family trophy in commemoration of a very fine player, who has long sincecrossed the line for the last time, but whose memory lives on in the handsoma shield which carries with it the supreme club honours of Auckland League. It was a fitting end to a great club season, and Marist has been widely congratulated on its brilliant run of successes. These congratulations have been tendered with due recognition of the great fight Devonport put up for the final honours under the handicap of a fairly lengthy spell of inactivity. In a koock-out competition like the Roope Rooster, it is the fortunes of war when a good team is eliminated early in the proceedings, but Devonport played the deciding match with never a murmur at the odds being against it, and after the game was quick and generous in its appreciation of Marist’s hard-won success. It was good to see these two teams at the top of the League this year. Both plav a style of football which displays the 13 a-side code at its colourful best, a bright, swiftly-changing panorama of flitting figures in clever and sustained movements, calling for the highest pitch of combination and team work. FIRM REFEREES NEEDED Better, too, had we seen more of Mr. Les. Bull in club football this season. On Saturday, the players found his crisp, alert work with the whistle an abrupt change from some of the easygoing refereeing of recent weeks. The result was that infringements drew quick and decisive punishment, and it was not till well on in the match that players realised that the man in charge was up to every move in the game, and that careless work with the ball (and without it) would weigh heavily to the detriment of their side. There were even frequent yells of disapproval from the sidelines, but they gradually died away when it was realised that this determined official was going to stand no nonsense with the scrums and the off-side rule, and that the game was the better for his decisive rulings. Mr. Bull may have mode some mistakes —who doesn’t?—but he clearly demonstrated that efficient refereeing is one of the first essentials in making the League game one of the fastest and most spectacular forms of team sport that is played to-day. The game itself fluctuated in rather peculiar fashion. Devonport, even with the preliminary advantage of a cross-wind, played the first spell in sluggish fashion. In the first 20 minutes, after Ruby had .lust missed an early chance to score, it looked odds on Marist running out a comfortable winner. Brisbane had crowned one of his most brilliant efforts with a

spectacular try, which had demonstrated the serious defensive weaknesses of two of Shore’s cleverest attacking backs, and Hassan and Brady were swinging out long, low passes which enabled the Green rearguard to sparkle time and again in scintillating back play. THE OLD DEVONPORT Late in the spell came a flash of Devonport combination in its most brilliant form. Len Scott got the ball on the right wing, suddenly whipped it back in-field for a change-direction movement, and sent the übiquitous Ruby scampering across the angle of the goal-posts with three black jerseys racing in support. Beattie, Preston and O’Leary handled in turn, the natty little winger putting the finishing touches on a magnificent movement by flinging himself over in the corner. Simons’s kick at goal was spinning to the near side of the posts ‘when it seemed to uncannily change its direction at the top of its flight and sailed straight between the uprights. It was an electrifying couple of minutes, and the crowd settled back at half-time to pleasant anticipations of a spectacular second spell. These anticipations were perhaps not quito fully realised. Marist got in early with a try by Stormont from a tangled press of forward play on the Devonport line, and for quite 20 minutes after, it was only mediocre football. St. George was showing clear-cut superiority in the scrums, and Devonport was using its backs at every conceivable opportunity, but the old smooth-running attacking machinery seemed to have rusted with disuse, and infringements and penalties were numerous. Tempers got on edge at times, and exasperated players on both sides threw their weight at the man and forgot the ball momentarily. BACKS OPEN OUT Then came Shore’s great effort. Alf Scott, a born leader, and roving free lar.ee, swung out into tile open, content to let the Black spearhead hold the balance of power in set scrums, and started to open up play for his backs with cleverly-directed stab-shots into the gaps in the Marist defences. His forwards came away in a fast loose clash to the Green twenty-five, Preston and Beattie broke clear in a fishing movement which had Marist in trouble, and even when Beattie looked to have spoilt his chance, he managed to get the ball on to O’Leary, who set the seal on a splendid display of quick and ele\ ~r work on the wing by scoring his second try. Marist cose to it like champions. With Johnson. Moisley and O’Brien toiling madly in front, Hassan got his backs away, and the brilliant Brisbane Droved his worth as the most dangerous centre threequarter in New Z. aland football to-day by racing a yard or two wide of his man, and sending on to his capable understudy of the previous Saturday, Hansen, who s'. a clean pair of heels to the Shore defenders. Again Gregory found the kick too difficult, and with the ringing of the bell a few minutes’ later, : Marist had gained a well-deserved vic- ! tory by the difference represented by three tries to two, with one of the latter converted. TRIUMPH FOR TEAM WORK It was no day for individual stars. Team-work was paramount, as it should be when the League game is played at its best. Brisbane was again a match-winner for Marist, butr'apart from him. individual credit was almost equally shared by 12 other genuine workers, even to Jim O’Brien, stormy petrel of New Zealand League, whose occasional moments of apparent foolishness (more apparent than real) are on excellent screen for a shrewd grasp of essentials. As far as Shore is concerned, it played a wonderfully good game, consi- ring that the edge had been taken off its play by several weeks’ inactivity. Seagar and Beattie were at times brilliant, and thrillm ~ on attack. One could only wish their defence was stronger. Let these two men concentrate on tackling and marking their opponents consistently, and both would have golden chances of playing their way into a New Zealand team in the next year or two.