FOOTBALL PROSPECTS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4176, 23 August 1939, Page 8

FOOTBALL PROSPECTS

KAWHIA’S POSITION. At the opening of the football season in Kawhia several pessimistic notes were struck, the union was resolved out of existence, cohesion was lacking in reverse ration to the amount of nebulous evidence produced to prove that, insofar as the Kawhia district is concerned, the game was played out and what seemed to be an unfortunate sign, an effort to effect the mergence of Kawhia and Oparau teams met with only a modicum of success. But football is not dead in the district, and so long as life is sustained there is hope that in the seasons to come the game will be repopularised and that enthusiasm, combined with level-headedness will eventually place it where it rightfully belongs, viz., in the front rank of manhood developing games. That the requisite qualities mentioned are being brought into operation in the district, it is only necessary to refer to reports of football activity in Oparau for proof, and it is from this point in the Kawhia County that there will emerge a resuscitated and extended interest in the game of games. At the present the process of revival has not reached the spectacular stage, but is moving with gratifying rapidity towards it. Young players are being beaten into shape under the tutelage of the older ones; the latter have not hesitated to don their own or someone else’s togs to show how football used to be played, and of course should be played. Younger players, with the precocity which blends so well with youth, have in their turn demonstrated the advantages which obtain to players under more 1 up-to-date tactics, and neither have conclusively demonstrated anything beyond what was patent to Rugby players 20, 30, even 50 years ago and more, namely, that the game is never learned, that though tactics may, and undoubtedly do, and must vary to meet team psychology, the game itself is constant, and to play it, and play it well, requires the same continuous application, the same constant exercise of judgment on the part of players as the all time constancy of the game itself. Players come and players go, tak-

ing with them tactics untransferable to others, but by their own individual adoption have helped to serve many a point in the games they played. It is this unavoidable and recurring change of players that makes all the possibilities of football unlearnable, but the appeal it makes to the average Briton is to try and learn his own and his team’s part in it. That is what is now happening at Oparau, and will ere long happen in Kawhia, Kinohaku and all over the county, thanks to the efforts made by those in Oparau.