Rugby In New Zealand Will Never Be Ousted By Soccer.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17865, 5 June 1926, Page 11

Rugby In New Zealand Will Never Be Ousted By Soccer.

AND LANCASTER PARK CROWDS WILL NEVER STREAM TO THE STADIUM—- “ SPORT IS CLEANEST AND BEST WHEN PROFESSIONALS ARE ABSENT,”

[Written for the “Star” by

Guiney.

44 'npHE States are absorbing professional footballers from X the Old Country at the rate of about a thousand a year to act as coaches.” So wrote H. N. Huffadine in last Saturday

night’s “ Star,” when he used two columns of space in an endeavour to show how Soccer is going to oust the Rugby game, and how the trams will all some day be running- to English Park, leaving Lancaster Park but a memory of the past. But he wasted too much ink in telling how the game is played in such places as Klondyke and Kaiapoi, and he failed to put into print his version of how this radical change from Soccer to Rugby is going to take place here in good old New Zealand. I can tell him in a few words why Rugby is New Zealand’s national game, or why baseball is the national pastime of the Yanks. People are what they are brought up to be, and who can deny that practically every young New Zealander with the least scrap of energy in him is reared with a Rugby ball in his hands? He grows up with the game. Give any youngster his natural desire, and would there be one in a hundred who would not play the Rugby game? As Mr Huffadine correctly writes, Nepia, Brownlie and other names are household words throughout this country. Why not the Soccer men? Did anyone see the swarm of small boys walking off the field with Bill Dailey at the finish of last Saturday’s game on the Oval. Every one of them as proud as the proverbial peacock. And why? Simply because Rugby is their natural element, and any man who plays it well and makes a name for himself is a hero in the eyes of all healthy schoolboys. Again, only on Wednesday, there arrived from the Old Country a cable message announcing the engagement of an English actress to Maurice Brownlie. Once more I ask why? For the simple reason that New Zealand’s Rugby players have become almost as important as great statesmen in the public eye.

“Soccer is the big sport,” writes Mr Huffadine. But he omits to say where, and goes on to try and convince his readers by enumerating the many places where the game is played. Men put on the gloves in every part of the world, and boxing is a big sport in America and Australia. But it does not make boxing the national sport of Spain. I fancy I remember reading somewhere or other that it was bull fighting. If Soccer is such a wonderful game it is astonishing that there is not an army of small fry escorting the Colin M’Dougalls off English Park each Saturday. Surely the Christchurch public are not missing a treat. I do not think the Christchurch crowds can be accused of bias. In that big crowd which watched the Chinese team play at Lancaster Park last year there were more Rugby supporters than there were Spccer. They enjoyed the game all right, and still they did not go to English Park the following week. Why not? This is the question Mr Huffadine leaves unanswered. No, I venture to predict that the buses will long have superseded the trams ere Lancaster Park has to make way - for English Park. “It is pure skill which stamps Soccer as apart from any other code,” continues the writer. Is there not more skill required when a man running at top has to judge the flight of an oval ball and handle it with the greatest precision, than in keeping a round ball, which rolls true, at the feet? It is skill that wins fame for the Rugby player. Without it he is a dud. The test of a Rugby game is the preponderance of skill on one side over another. I do not say that Soccer can be played without skill. All games require skill, and I fail to see where the Soccer game is stamped apart from any other ball game. Accuracy and precision are just as essential in a game of girls’ basket ball, only of course to a more limited degree than in football. As for positional play,. is not this an essential thing in every game quite as much so as in Rugby as in Soccer? I have played half a dozen scratch games, of Soccer and have seen a few games, but never yet have I had the good fortune to witness “five forwards galloping downfield in almost perfect line, the ball whipping from one to another with marvellous accuracy and precision, forming as exciting spectacle as could be found.” But what I have seen is half a dozen or so speedy Rugby backs use all the .skill in their possession in a passing rush to evade as many opponents who are equally clever. Their handling has been magnificent, their side stepping thrilling, they have evaded brilliant tacklers and have gone from end to end of the field in one rush which has brought the crowds to their feet, and the further the rush went the louder the yells of encouragement from the crowd. This is

no mere pen picture. It is to be seen in almost every game of Rugby. And that is why the people are so fond of the game. Get two well-matched Rugby teams and a crowd will be kept in a fever of the highest excitement as the play swings from one end of the field and back again. The claim that Soccer is one of the oldest games in the world does not necessarily mean that it is the best. “Soccer is a straight out sporting battle. There is no inside stuff,” wrote Mr IlufTadino last week. Just what he means by “no inside stuff'’ is not quite clear, but I shall point out in his own article where there is “inside stuff” and then my readers may judge for themselves. Take these few lines for instance. “The States are absorbing professional footballers from the Old Country at the rate of about a thousand a year to act as coaches. Then a Scottish player got into trouble through breaking his contract.” I am open to correction, but I should certainly term this “inside stuff.’* Whoever heard of a Rugby player entering into any contract to play his purely sporting game? No. put the best amateur sport before the public and see if it will not attract a larger crowd than a professional sport. The crowd which filled the stadium the night of that great mile contest between Rose and Hahn was ample evidence of this. Put both runners on a salary of £IOOO a year (an amount similar to that paid to leading Soccer professionals at Home) and let them run against one another a few times at Crystal Pal- , ace. I think the crowds would soon I wake up to the fact that all was not | right. The amateur game is the game, and that is another reason why New Zealand people go in such huge numbers to see Rugby football. We in New Zealand know that Soccer is not a professional game as played here, but it is at headquarters—London—and New Zealanders remember this. Mr Huffadine will probably agree that all the best men playing Soccer here come from “the Old Dart.” I was rather amused in reading Mr Huffadine’s reference to the Hakoah team of Jews playing Soccer in Amecira. “They know the game," he says. Rather ambiguous this! Another amusing passage was the following:—“One of these days., there will be a world’s Soccer team made up of teams representing all the countries of the world.” What on earth for? To get their photographs taken?- It’s a monte they won’t have any opponents unless they travel to Mars or are pitted against Old Nick’s select few on the other side of the Great Goal Line. No, New Zealand has nothing to fear from the Soccer game so far as it concerns the ousting of Rugby. Neither need Mr Frank Thompson’ lo.se any sleep over the reduction of specials to Lancaster Park on Saturday afternoons.