Proposed New Zealand Athletic Team for England.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7197, 4 February 1892, Page 4

Proposed New Zealand Athletic Team for England.

•■ Mr L. A. Cuff, Hon Secretary of the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association, has received the following letter through Mr G. F. Clulee, the Association's late representative in England, from the Hon Secretary of the English Amateur Athletic Association :— London, Dec. 13, 1891. My Dear Clulee,— l, last night, at the first general meeting of the Committee held since your visit, read the correspondence you lodged with me, re the proposed visit of a New Zealand team to England in 1892. As I told you would be case on reading the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association's definition, there oould be no doubt whatever as to the welcome any team of New Zealanders coming under that definition would receive at the hands of the English Amateur Athletic Association. I detailed the various conversations we had together on the subject, and the following resolution was at once drafted and carried unanimously :— "That the Committee will most j cordially welcome any team of New Zealand amateur athletes coming to England under the auspices of the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association." Perhaps if you decide to come you might wire me just this ! — " Athlete, London, England, yes." I shall know what it means. You will have plenty of invitations to compete. Indeed, Huddersfield, Crewe and Tuffnell Park Amateur Athletic Clubs' Secretaries all took your addresses from us at once, intending, I know, to write and ask your team to compete at their meetings. Probably their letters will come by the same mail as this. If it is your Association's intention to try and arrange joint meet* ings in England you bad better write at once. They are universal here, and all the big clubs in big towns have their own annual fixtures, and a second joint one, even with you, would be risky. We even find a championship meeting in, say Manchester, Crewe, Stoke, Southport, &c, hardly secures a bigger gate, sometimes scarcely as big as the. local crack annual meeting, and certainly a joint meeting with the London Athletic Club and yourselves would be a loss. Athletics in London rarely do more than pay. There are so many other things. For instance, the Oxford and Cambridge sports in March get a seven thousand gate, simply because it is the thing to go to them. Oxford v. London Athletic Club last November could only get eiz hundred spectators. Let me hear Boon. — With very kind regards, yours most truly, C. Hebbbbt, Hon Secretary, English Amateur Athletic Association. By the same mail a letter was re* ceived from Mr H. Beardaell, one of the Hon Secretaries of the Huddersfield Cricket and Athletic Club, asking the team to compete on June 18, at the Club's annual eporta meeting, and offering to make the team the guests of the Club during their stay, and pay all their expenses. The Huddersfield meeting is the largest and best athletic gathering held in England, and the Secretary in his letter presses very much for the team to compete.