ALL BLACKS AND DUTCH

Taranaki Daily News, 24 September 1928, Page 5

ALL BLACKS AND DUTCH

STRONG RACIAL FEELING EVIDENCE SHOWN AT GAMES. SOMETHING MORE THAN FOOTBALL i (Ry J. T. Burrows in Christchurch Star). When the team played at Bloemfontein and Burghersdorp it played before real Dutch crowds. We always find that the more Dutch a district is tho more supporters we get from the English section. The South African crowds on the whole are rather unfair. In Rhodesia there was nothing but applause the whole game, and good play by our sdie was appreciated just as much as good football by their own. We can’t help feeling that the Dutch look upon our games as more than just football. So much bitter feeling has been stirred up by this flag question, that the fact is always being impressed on us that our games, in some districts at all events, are a question of English versus Dutch. Unfortunately all this does not make for clean Rugby football. I hardly heard two E-ugl«ti words spoken amongst the crowd at Bloemfontein. Perhaps it was just as well for those of the team wh'b were watching that we could understand no Dutch. I heard one Dutchman yell out in English once, “Come on the dirty players." It might have stirred his own team on to further efforts, but it is the same in all Dutch districts—our fellows are condemned before they go on the field. The team has played very clean football all through the tour, and goodness knows there has been provocation enough for the other. Unfortunately people here, or many of them, canqpt distinguish between hard play and dirty play. A man who fights through with the bail is called a dirty player, and frequently one of our players has been hooted for fending cl! a high tackler. I heard a story of the second Test which, honestly, is typical of a Dutch crowd. A email setion of the . crowd on the bank began to hoot one of our players. Immediately a Dutchman on the stand began to hoot too. An Englishman sitting next to him asked him why in the wxld he was hooting when he did not have the faintest idea as to what had occurred. “Bet man.” said the Dutchman, “they’re hooting the All B’arks aren’t they*”

“Alan” is a barred word in the team because the people over here sav it so frequently.

“Scoff,’ a noun used for food, is another which must not be used; and it is simply asking to hav-o something thrown at you to eay “Ya.” I think the first word we ail learnt vxj “For.tsak”—a very impolite expression used to tell a dog to go somewhere else. At first eomeone remarked that “the dogs are all called ‘Foetsak’ in this country but they won’t como when yen call them.”

While we were in Bloemfontein it was a-s cold as charity. There we were presented with a Springbok akin each ,—rthe skins of those animals we shot some weeks before. Many of the term

too, had various buck heads given to them. We left fcr.Btirjheradorp early Monday morning, and arrived at half past three in the afternoon. Burghersdorp is the funr.it little

place it is possible to imagine. Jt is the only “dorp”-—a Dutch word for a village—that we have been in so far. There was only the one hotel, and the less said about that place the belter. After all the food wasn't so ocl, and that made up for a lot. There were two or three stores with a very queer assortment of goods inside. They seemed to cater chiefly for native trade, and the first thing to meet one's eyes inside the door was invariably an array of gaudy blankets. All the natives around that district ware blankets round their shoulders. The streets were narrow and winding, with trees along the Bides, and full of cows, fowls and natives. There wts no sign of prosperity of any sort, and there didn't seem to be much difference between the “poor white” and the native —certainly as far as cleanliness went. The nights were bitterly cold, and it was most depressing to see miserable people huddled round small fire”. Each day convicts, under the charge of a coloured warder armed with a rifle, ewept the streets and picked up papers, etc. I am sure, had the convicts ,wished to escape, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to do so, because sometimes two or three would be working rcrrnd a ccrtier while the Warder would be out of sight talking casually to someone. Probably the prisoners were much better off in prison than in the’r own homes. One morning Gecf. Alley and I visited the native location jurt outside the village. We visited a native school, where there were two native teachers and about twenty fenny little Kaffir children. I think it creaks volumes, when even in that strong Dutch district no language tut English vr?.s Taught in that school. One of the teachers very proudly showed us his essay books, and did wish afterwards that I had asked him for one. Their English was the strangest ever written, and then, no doubt, wo eaw only the best books. One essay was on "‘An Inspector's Visit.” remember one passage: “When we entered the schoolroom, our hearts were beating fast, but I was the most brave, and made my heart to beat correctly. Then the inspector sitted and all was better. He gave us spelling and I had three mistakes wrong, and I forget what happened then.” The school sang to us, and their singing left that of our New Zealand, schools far behind. They sang four part songs, two in English and two in their own language, and in each song we could distinguish three parts distinctly, while the teacher kept putting in a bass. The Kaffirs voices are not bo rich as fte Maoris, but they harmonise verv well.