AS OTHERS SEE US

Taranaki Daily News, 6 September 1935, Page 12

AS OTHERS SEE US

THOSE FOOTBALL SCRIBES ELTHAM CRITIC’S FRIENDLY JIBES ONE MAN’S PLEASURE-ANOTHER’S WORK (By “Stand Off.”) . QUITE unconsciously, the Taranaki Daily News has been handed a raspberry. ■ Not just an ordinary raspberry, but one that, with its juice and its colourings has come to be known in the language o£ the flowers as a sign of disfavour. The token of esteem has come from Dr. D. H. Saunders, th© well-known Eltham medical man, whose "sporting interests have made him a popular figure in the town. At the annual dinner o the Eltham Rugby Club recently, in proposing the toast of the supporters and Press, he had something to say about the Fourth Estate—some people call it far worse things than fourth-including a remark that we should be reminded that the boundary of Taranaki was not at the Meeting of the Waters. We blush with shame to, think that we had ever duped our readers into believing that it was.

Dr. Saunders made other remarks. Proposing the toast, he is understood to have said that without supporters football would never get anywhere. He thanked the Press, saying that, like the curate’s egg, it was good in parts.*.. One paper gave good and fair reports of Rugby matches; another he thanked for its space, “which might have been used to better purpose.” And the Taranaki Daily News was reminded that the boundary of Taranaki did not end at the Meeting of the Waters, but considerably further south.

r The other newspapers quoted by Dr. Saunders are, one knows, perfectly capable of looking after themselves, and the Eltham Argus, whose kindly patriotism has doubtless helped the Rugby dub at times replied in a friendly spirit to Dr. Saunders’ remarks. Of its reporter’s criticisms the paper said: “We feel that, interpreted in the sp : rit in.which they were given, our critic’s advice to players, appearing from time to time in our columns, was well calculated to be of value to t v -> Eltham dub, even if he refrained from pursuing the line of least resistance and indulging in an orgy of back-scatching.”

Dr. Saunders’ remarks were obviously made in bantering vein, and we take compliment, while replying in the same light-hearted manner, that he should have been interested enough in us to note our peculiar geographical limitations.

We forgive him. In our present mood of benign forgiveness we are liable ,to admit anything. We are liable, for instance, to admit th- Dr. Saunders probably sees just as many Rugby games as we do, and that he braves the terrors of the Okaiawa, Opunake and other giounds with the same calm fortitude in the face of adversity that is—we say it with the modesty of the truly humble—-one-of our finest possessions. But there is the difference. We go there in a commercial spirit to make as good a job of the report as we can. Dr. Saunders goes there from enthusiasm . for the Eltham club. As the Americans put things so succinctly in their talkies—“ain’t love grand.” Continuing in our present mood we might tell Dr. Saunders that five of the small army of Daily News reporters who regularly report Rugby each week are permanently resident in districts up to 40 miles south of the salubrious spot known as the Meeting of the Waters; that there are at least a dozen Taranaki newspaper men who have played Rugby in all grades up to representative; that it is unnecessary, even in face of the foregoing fact, to play a game for years to

have a knowledge of its fundamentals; and, if we had the Stevensonian precision for a phrase, we could probably go on ranting by the hours of our work. But we won’t. Sometimes, when we manage to spend as long as an hour in dear thought—as distinguished from the mud plaster which is apparently thought by some critic to be the state of our thoughts, particularly when composing masterly football surveys—we like, to think of our work as a rather glorious occupation and one which we have devoted considerable time and study to master. We can agree with ourselves, since nobody else will, that Rugby reporting is work. And work, as everyone knows, takes study. We ..have never suggested ourselves as candidates for “plates” informing the world that we are general practitioners in the grand old job of medicine. But. enough of this bickering. Should we descend from our comfortable perches to mingle in a brawl? Should we, who have never known the physical discomforts in a scrum of a cauliflower ear, or the stinging crack as boot meets shin, even try to fight a levititious criticism? We feel sure Dr. Saunders will pardon us if we refuse to be drawn into a contest where, by the very nature of our insular upbringing, we would start in the, dead ball area. Reporters have their dreams—we guessed, Old Subscriber, that you’d say we were always having them—and ours is of a quiet little country where nothing more dangerous than tiddleywinks is played, where there is no demarcation of provinces, and where in sunshine as bright as that which streams on us now, we could play happily all day long, clapping our hands with childish delight when a favourite gramophone record was played. But we must come out of our dream. If we kept on- writing in the strain, of the last paragraph we’d be drinking methylated spirits in no time. We must be serious and stern. We must inform Dr. Saunders that we have enough faith to believe that our opinion is worth while to us, if to no one else. We must inform him that we wouldn’t change our methods for the world; that thqse methods have been the consistent reporting of Rugby accurately, impartially, without malice and in the belief that those we have criticised or praised have deserved either. For Dr. Saunders* sake, we would like, one of these flays, to see a team of southerners take the field in' Taranaki’s name, and we are as confident as Dr. Saunders that it would give a first-class showing. But at the moment the best 15 men are not all in the southern part bf-the province.