CONSCRIPTION AND SPORT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10234, 17 August 1911, Page 1

CONSCRIPTION AND SPORT.

OPINIONS OF LEADING SPORTSMEN. The feeling expressed at Tuesday's meeting of the Canterbury Cricket Association that military training was likely to have a serious effect on the sport of the dominion is not endorsed to any great extent by prominent sportsmen in the city,. Mr G. H. Mason, president of the Rugby Union, said he did not anticipate any appreciable effect on sport. He thought that if conscription were a matter of vital importance to the dominion, and he considered it was, then the youth of the country should be prepared to put up with a little inconvenience. It was no use taking exception to what had to be. Football and cricket were established a-s recreation .from the sterner paths of life. Militarism was merely another form of recreation, and an extremely healthy and beneficial one, and therefore footballers and other sportsmen were not likely to stand in the way of another branch of sport. He considered the whole matter rested on whether the Defence authorities were willing to compromise with sports bodies and refrain from holding parades when important sporting fixtures were to take place, and to give sufficient notice as to when the parades would be held. This would get over most of the difficulty, and he thought that, in the football season especially, players would relish the change from one sport to another. He considered that military training was going to have a very beneficial effect 011 the health of the dominion's youth, .besides teaching them the invaluable sport of shooting,, an ait which would stand them in good stead in any branch of sport they took up. Mr F. Wilding, a prominent figure in local cricket circles, said he rather regretted the attitude taken by the Cricket Association. Personally he would not care to make one of the deputation to wait on Colonel Hawkins, Tile Government, with the approval of nineteen-twentieths oi the dominion's populace, had passed an Act which was for the welfare of the country, and he considered that sports bodies should not take up a hostile attitude. Cricketers had always received the utmost support from the public, and he thought that the attitude taken up by the Cricket Association was a poor return for the public's support. He did not think there would be any bad effects on the country's cricket; the Senior cricket would not suffer at all and the Junior grades to a very small extent. He considered that without any formal deputation from the Cricket Association the military authorities would endeavour to arrange parades '' to suit the youngsters." Mr F. C. Raphael said that cricketers certainly were not opposed to military training. All that they asked was that it should not stop them from taking part in their hobby. They wished to have their Saturday afternoons for cricket. If the proposal to have training 011 the first and third Saturdays of each month were carried out it would certainly interfere with all kinds of sports, and he thought that those who had a love for athletics should be considered. Li the Daylight Saving Hill were passed, "the clock couid be put back for an hour, and he felt sure that the Territorials would gladly get up an hour earlier and go through the necessary training in the morning rather than be inconvenienced by having it on Saturday afternoons.