THE NEW ZEALAND TEAM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8377, 25 July 1905, Page 3

THE NEW ZEALAND TEAM.

THE CRITICS CRITICISED. The New Zealand team has been analysed and parsed to some considerable extent, and the taskmasters' diatribes have been ticked backwards and forwards across the Tasman Sea and up and down the colony. The eyes of Europe, by this time, must be on the colony's Rugby representatives. Asia, Africa and America must know that the forwards are not as ferocious as some of their precursors. The gentlemen who have been so searcihingly diagnosed with 4-X-rays have borne the operation silently. They have let the omniscient experts have their full say, and they are waiting for time and tide to revenge them. With the object of learning what the criticised thought about the critics, a reporter strayed into a dressingroom at Lancaster Park this morning, and rather fearsoniely interviewed half a dozen members of the team. They had been out training, they hod unrobed, they had gone under the showerbath, and, though busy drying themselves and massaging eoi-e places with embrocation , they spared a little time to discuss their critics. " They are always pulling us to pieces," growled one man. <f Th<w are judging us on one match." " They put a lot of incidents in the papers that did not happen at all," declared another of the maligned. "We'll do all right at Home," prophesied an, optimist. " Otago and Southland played the game of their lives," confessed another, ungrudgingly. The burden of their declamation was that tfhe team had been hastily judged, and that the verdict was scarcely fair.

[Fbom Qttr Correspondent.] WELLINGTON, July 25. Mr T- H. Davey to-day interviewed the Premier with a view of getting the Government offices closed from 1 p. m. on Thursday next, on the occasion of the New Z^alan^-Canterbury football match, and the Premier acceded to his request.

The Dunedin contingent, with Glasgow and Glenn, will arrive this evening. "' Mr F. T. Evans will referee in the match, New Zealand versus Canterbury, on Tlmreday afternoon^ and the game •will commence at_ 2.30, in order that it may be finished in time to enable the colony's representatives to oateh the 6.25 train for Lyttelton. Reserved chairs can still be booked at Messrs Milner and Thompson"-.-.