International Tours

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 689, 14 June 1929, Page 6

International Tours

By

“EX-REP”

It is a little unfortunate that those keen young sportsmen from the Australian Universities have done so poorly on their Neio Zealand tour. Frankly, from the international standpoint, it has been a bad advertisement for Rugby. A charge of 3s. to view last Saturday's match from the stand was out of all proportion to the value of the match. It is not proposed here to touch on the controversy regarding the eligibility of graduates to play in these matches. That can be best left to the University authorities in the two Dominions to deal with themselves. But at the same time there is a definite onus on them to see that in future the teams come up to a reasonable standard, and that the public can be assured of fair value for its money.

It is not all on the Australian side. New Zealand sent a Varsity athletic team across the Tasman last month. In the one really important test in which it took part, the New Zealand- team won one event out of about a dozen. The difficulty seems to be in getting the best teams away. But from the viewpoint of a country's reputation in sport, any body in charge of an international tour is entitled to weigh well the prospects of the team it is sending abroad, especially where it is depending on public support to help the tour along.