NEXT YEAR’S RUGBY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18009, 20 November 1926, Page 9

NEXT YEAR’S RUGBY.

I HAWKE’S BAY AND | NEW ZEALAND TEAMS. | Ill!llll!lillII!l!!ll!lllll!!!ll!I!l!!llillinilll!llllll!l!!!ll!llllil!l!llll!iniil!Il!IllIIIII!im!

According to Mr N. M’Kensie, the Hawke’s Bay Rugby stalwart, thero will be lots of room for new representatives in the New Zealand and Hawke’s Bay teams next year.

Speaking to a reunion of footballers at Hastings, Mr Norman M’Kenzie, selector of the Hawke’s Bay Rugby team, made some interesting references to the future of football in this district, especially in reference to its likely contributions to the personnel of the New Zealand team that is to visit South Africa next year (reports the Hawke’s Bay “Herald”). For the last three or four years, said Mr M’Kenzie, Hawke’s Bay had basked in the sunshine of a growing football fame, particularly so far as its provincial record went. However, when the New Zealand team was selected to go to South Africa next year, there would be many new faces in it; that would have to be so, for footballers could not last for ever. There would be lots of room for new All Blacks next year.

In 1920 many local young men, having had experience at the war, came back, and it was found that they had become footballers of more than aver age quality. It was that fact that began the growth of Rugby in Hawke’s Bay, and year by year the game had improved to such an extent that the provincial team of 1925 was the best that Hawke’s Bay ever had. There were many not in it that he would have liked to see in it—forwards especially—but many old players had been compelled to give up the game for various reasons.

The Bay team of 1927 would have many new' players in it, and -where they were to come from remained with the young players now in the game. His advice to the young men was, when they went out to play next year, to attempt to mode! their games on those of the excellent players that they had seen in representative games, and to apply to their own play the line points that they had seen exploited on M’Lean Park. If they were followers of the half-back game, try to model their game on the play of J. Mill, than whom there was no better half-back to learn from, and so on with the others. Young players should never forget that they were not individual units, but that each was one of fifteen. The biggest thing in the game was to get rid of the ball when the man beside you was in a better position than you were. Who scored did not matter—it was all for the team.

“ Play the game for all you are worth,” concluded Mr M’Kenzie, “ and you won’t have to look back on the bad old days of (say) 1912, when I used to have a game here.”