SPORT and SPORTSMEN

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20238, 23 February 1934, Page 11

SPORT and SPORTSMEN

Miss Helen Jacobs', holder of the United States women's singles championship, proposes to make another European tour this year. She intends t<* play in the Vv.-nibledon tournament, the French championships at Paris, i and the Italian championships at Milan. A. E. Johns, who was a member of j the 1896 and 1899 Australian Elevens j that toured England, died in Mel- I bourne this month, ile was regarded i as the most stylish wicketkeeper Aus- j tralia ever produced, but his hands j proved too soft to stand up to the cannon-ball deliveiy of the South Aus- j tralian express bowler, Ernest Jones, j The Australian dirt-track season, with its Test duels between the English and Australian teams, was cut j short when the English riders re- ■ ceived notice that they were required j iti Britain as soon as possible, for the opening of the season there. They were f in Brisbane when the news came and had to dash for Sydney, where they l drew with Australia in the last Test f but one. Now they are on the road j home. :: x Empire Games. The British Empire Games, to be held in England next August, should be the greatest sporting festival seen in this country since the 1908 Olympic Games, says London “ Sporting Life.” The new White City Stadium will be the venue for the athletic events, the boxing, wrestling and swimming competitions will be held at Wembley, leaving the cycle racing for the Fallowfield track at Manchester. Mr Evan Hunter, secretary of the British Empire Games Association, expects that over 500 athletes of both sexes would take part in the Games. Lord Derby, president of the Association, will be president of the Games, which will open at the White City on August 4. Gordon Lowe was a great tennis player in his dey—he won the Australian champi'j.psbip in 1915—and one oi England’s most reliable writers on tennis, is very confident of Australia winning through tc the challenge round to meet England at Wimbledon. Lowe expects the Australians to win the European zone and beat America in the inter-zone final. He adds the rider that all depends on Crawford regaining the super-form he showed last year in England. ' X •*« X Even Sydney Laughed. A writer in the “ Sydney Bulletin ” comments on the cancelled cricket tour:—lf the selection of the team for England raised some eyebrows the frantic attempts of the selectors to rake together a mob to tour Maoritand were mirth-provoking. For one reason and another a number oi -those chosen excused themselves, like the Biblical guests asked to the wedding feast, and towards the finish the whole country was raked to find-a team. Tom Garrett wasn't approached, but he must be about the only one. The chief trouble was, of course, that only 15s a day pocket-money was to have been paid. In these prosperous times to offer an amateur cricketer only five guineas a week over and above all his expenses isn’t nearly good enough. What the Maorilanders, who were hoping for a decent side, able to pay expenses at the gates at least, thought of the collection headed by the venerable Jack Ryder would probably sound mor respectable if translated into Maori. They cancelled the tour. X X X Another step in the progress of the Rugby League football code in Auckland is to be taken with the erection of a new grandstand at Carlaw Park before the next winter season. The structure, with concrete foundations and built in wood, will cost approximately £3OOO. Tenders are to be called and the work is to be started shortly. The new stand, while embracing the present stand, which will be improved to harmonise with the main design, will provide seating accommodation for from 2500 to 3000 people. Young Seeling, the New Zealander, is still playing fine football as breakaway for Warrington League Club, states a writer in the “ Auckland Star,” and there are encouraging reports about Innes (Christchurch), centre three-quarter for Wigan, and Len Mason (Waikato), forward with the same team. On January 8, Walker (Wairarapa), who has been doing well as a winger for Bradford Northern, received severe injury. Although St Helens were downed by Leigh, Hardgrave (Auckland) had a prominent part in the losers’ two tries. The management of the Empire Games in England recently rearranged the programme, transferring the cycling events to Manchester for August 11. This will clash with the world’s amateur sprint cycling championships, to be held at Leipzig on the same day. The leading British sprinters will thus have to give the chance of a world’s championship a miss or dodge the Empire events. jj Wilding Park Admired. Great admiration for Wilding Park and the facilities it offered Canterbury lawn tennis players was expressed by Mr W. J. Sheehan, vice-president of the Northern Lawn Tennis Association of Tasmania, and a past champion of Tasmania, who visited the park yesterday. “ These courts are wonderful,” he said, “and they tell me that they are actually in credit. Few tennis clubs in Australia have a credit balance.” Mr Sheehan said tennis was very popular in Tasmania, where the game was played all th« year round. Play at night on flood-lit courts was also popular. There were, however, too many asphalt courts in Tasmania, and he was sorry to say he had seen the same thing in New Zealand. Mr Sheehan said that what was needed to improve the standard of play in the Dominion was the sending abroad of more teams. He was very pleased to note that New Zealand was to be represented in the next Davis Cup series, although he thought it a pity that four men could not be sent, instead of three. Mr Sheehan spent much of his time in taking photographs of the park to show his tennis friends in his home town of Launceston.

Two notable additions to professional tennis are Rico and Filo I-aeon-die, Chilean brothers, who recently disorganised professional tennis betting hv defeating Nusslein and Ivozeluh. The Chileans have opened a fund to send them to Europe to clean up the professionals there, and, that done, they will invade Tilden’s fastnesses. The two first made acquaintance with tennis as ball-boys. Cricket Coddling. When the early Australian Elevens which made this country’s reputation on cricket fields overseas set out on their Odysseys they never bothered about taking along masseurs, field ambulances and a set of \ A.D.’s, though the teams rarely numbered more than a baker s dozen and a programme of 40 matches or so was a commonplace (remarks the Sydney “Bulletin”).. If any shin wanted a plaster or a bruise rubbing, they did it themselves with a mate to help. Your modern is in another category. lie must have skilled masseurs in his dressing-rooms and other help of the kind at beck and call. Some of the luckless lads conscripted to go to England this year at £6OO the trip and all expenses paid are already demanding a masseur to travel with them. The board does not fall in with the idea, but the problem is easily solved. Let the players so much in need of him each subscribe a modicum of that £6OO themselves for the services of a strapper-down and the thing is done. Borotra, the bounding Basque, will bound no more on the tennis court. lie is now deeply interested in golf. In taking up the game he has followed the example of his brother-in-arms, Lacoste, who is now a scratch player in France. Another tennis champion who later made a name on the links was H. L. Doherty.