SPORT AND SPORTSMEN.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 194, 17 August 1931, Page 7

SPORT AND SPORTSMEN.

Promoted to the wing-three-quarter position for Merivale on Saturday, Howatson appeared to be frothing for a chance to get over the line. Bullivant unfortunately left him out of his scheme in some of the early rushes, but wnen he got the opportunity. Howatson dragged three men across with him to score. He was very determined and hard to stop, and once under way galloped at a strong pace. •: Playing for Queensland against N.S.W. in Sydney on July 28, 1894, J. Patterson, a forward, scored the only field goal of its kind in test history in Australia. The “ Sydney Morning Herald ” of the time describes the incident: ‘‘Taking a speculative shot at the ball as it was rolling on the ground, Patterson lifted it over the N.S.W. bar.” N.S.W. won the match by 20-12. Robb, the talented Whangarei High School second five-eighths, who was largely responsible for his team’s victory over Mt. Albert Grammar, 6-3, on Saturday, proved that he has some force behind his boot. One of his line kicks landed among a group of spectators on the seat running along the sideline (at Whangarei), with the result that four “barrackers” were knocked over. The incident caused a good laugh in the grandstand. The Otago Varsity men justifiably have the reputation of playing bright, open football, but with a' number of their regular players absent on Saturday, those representing the strong Southern team failed to deliver the goods against Merivale. The passing lacked snap, and there was little enterprise in their play until comparativelv late in the second half. As with the local teams, they found the speed of the Merivale backs a great factor in defence. The Australian Rugbv team’s first match of the New Zealand tour will be with Otago’s representatives at Dunedin next Saturday. To meet this engagement the tourists will have a long trip on top of their voyage from Sydney to Auckland. There should be a great sporting future before the son of Rene Lacoste, the famous tennis player. This baby was born just as the Wimbledon tournaments began. His mother, formerly Mademoiselle Thion de la Chaume, won the British women’s

open golf championshjp in 1927. Another boy who will become either famous or a club bore is Donald Judd, aged twelve, who, when Jack Hobbs visited Guildford Grammar School, clean bowled him after the veteran had knocked the bowling of the masters and the first eleven

all over the field. After Judd had spread-eagled Hobbs’s wicket with a yorker. his comrades chaired and cheered him round the school.

Max Schmeling, world’s heavy-weight boxer, was £14,000 richer on May 9 as the result of his two months’ exhibition tour, which took him to forty-five cities in the United States and Canada. This was the sum the German earned mauling his sparring partners in three-round exhibition bouts. Joe Jacobs, manager of the champion, said Schpieling averaged £3OO for each of his engagements.

Bobby Jones and Henry Cotton, playing over the Ryder Cup course recently, failed to concede a handicap of a stroke a hole in a foursome with Miss Helen Hicks and Mrs Marion Turpie-Lake. The ladies won by 3 and 1. Jones went round in 72, Cotton 74, Miss Hicks 85 and Mrs Turpie-Lake in 91. The sparkling incident of the game Canterbury College v. Victoria College was supplied by the Maori, Ruru, who has had considerable big football experience for his years. His runs delighted the crowd and nonplussed the opposition. Had he been fortunate enough to get some real support, he would have been even more disconcerting to Canterbury. Swerving runs and the ability to dodge out of an awkward corner, were a feature of his play. He also showed how to tackle. Cormack, Mackenzie and Pacy also played well for the visitors, but none were in Ruru’s class. Strikes are not as common in football circles as the Comrades would like to see them, but a recent Victorian happening shows the seed has been planted, says the Sydney “Bulletin.” A country club known as Sea Lake recalled its selection committee by an overwhelming vote and appointed new one. This speedily incurred opprobrium by replacing an absentee with another player who was not on the emergency list. The team then struck until the blackleg was removed. He withdrew voluntarily after fifty minutes’ argument, and the supporters of solidarity went on the field. They got the father of a towelling from their opponents. Still, the cause was triumphantly vindicated. “Bunny” Austin, the English youngster who performed so brilliantly in recent Davis Cup matches, was a Repton boy before going up to Cambridge, where he first began to figure in firstclass tennis. At Repton he had been a notable cricketer, and was a sound tip by the experts for a cricket Blue, and probably higher honours later on. First-class batsmen are as plentiful in England as blackberries, while until recently it was the other way about with tennis players, so Austin’s cross-over to the summer game was all to the good. An interesting personality in international tennis is Elizabeth Ryan, a non-starter at Wimbledon, owing to an injury. Right up in the first class as a player, the young woman has reached the final of the women’s singles four times, but has always had her light doused in the final rally. Nevertheless, her name figures on the championship list, for last year she won the women’s doubles in partnership with Helen Wills and the mixed doubles with Australian Jack Crawford. She is known as the woman without a country. American-born and an American representative, she later took up domicile in England. Under tennis conventions she is not permitted to represent either country, though she would certainly be a first pick for both.

The Olympic Games to be held in Los Angeles next year will continue for sixteen days and nights in nine stadiums, auditoriums and water courses, from July 30 to August 14. There will be 135 distinct sports programmes, representing fifteen branches of athletics. A golf endurance test, stated to have been accomplished by Sir Oliver Lambart at Westgate-on-Sea, England, consisted of doing fourteen rounds two holes between dawn and sunset, during which time he played ISOO strokes and walked 50 miles. On the Sunday of the Northamptonshire match the New Zealand cricketers were entertained at Milton Castle, near Peterborough, the ancestral seat of the Earls of Fitzwilliam. Some members of the team played golf, while others were taken over the fine old house, which is filled with priceless works of art, and through glorious old-fashioned gardens. South Australia has lost an athlete under unusual circumstances. He is T. A. Kullburg, who has been recalled to his native Finland to undergo his period of military service. Kullburg has been in South Australia for the last couple of years, and has done a lot to raise the standard of the field-games sections of athletics, at which he is a champion. He goes home as a seaman on the sailing-ship Hougomont, but is returning to South Australia when his eighteen months of military training has expired. It is more than likely that the world’s champion professional sculler, Ted Phelps, will go to Australia to defend his title next year, if the cash can be got together. Ex-champion George Towns has written him frtun Sydney that a match for £SOO or £IOOO a side can be arranged, with £2OO for travelling expenses. The Phelps family do not consider the latter sum large enough, and negotiations are proceeding. The question of who will be Phelps’s opponent has not been settled. The likeliest man in sight is Alf Burns, of the Richmond River (New South Wales). Though a light-weight—lOst 131 b—he is the best professional in Australia to-day, and has defeated all his challengers. Little has been heard of Wizard Smith lately, but it is reported that the Australian speed driver will give the big car that he and Don Harkness have been building in Sydney a spin on the Ninety-mile Beach, New Zealand, in October. Opinion is all against the month chosen, ideal conditions not existing until January, February and March. Cyril Tolley, ex-amateur champion of Britain, has never been famed in golf as a sticker, brilliant as he is on many occasions. In law he seems to pack a different mentality, for a cable states that he has at last won his case against a chocolate-manufacturing firm which used a caricature of him as an advertisement. Tolley originally sued the firm for libel, since he thought the publication reflected on his amateur status, and got a verdict for £IOOO. The matter was taken to the House of Lords. Here a new trial was ordered, and at this the indignant golfer was awarded £SOO. How he will find his bank balance when the costs have been settled it is impossible to say, but since he is a London stockbroker he is, presumably, able to afford the luxury of long-drawn-out litigation, expensive as it is.