RUGBY FOOTBALL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18973, 26 March 1924, Page 4

RUGBY FOOTBALL

At its meeting on Saturday night last the Otago Rugby Union adopted a resolution to the effect that the tour of Great Britain during next winter by a team from New Zealand should be abandoned “unless the flayers receive more consideration than is proposed.” As the Dunedin Times remarks, this resolution would have been much more likely to be effective if it had been passed, and the concurrence of the other district unions with it had been secured, several months ago. The tour has already been definitely arranged upon the terms laid down by the English Rugby Union and the pro-

gramme of matches has been prepared. The terms are novel in the respect that the English Union has stipulated that there shall be no allowance to the members of the team, even for out-of-pocket expenses. Our southern contemporary believes it is correct in saying that no British team has ever visited the Dominions upon such terms as these. The English Union is applying in the case of the New Zealand team terms which it has not thought necessary to apply to the case of any team from Great Britain which has come to New Zealand under its authority. If it has been advisable or necessary to grant allowances—of 3s a day, or whatever the amount may be—to reimburse English players their petty expenses, it is certainly not less desirable or necessary that allowances of this nature should be made to players from the Dominions, where there is no leisured or moneyed class from which the members of a touring team may be drawn. But between payments of allowances of this description and payment for loss of time, the Times notes a plain and broad distinction which must be obvious to anyone. Payment for loss of time is, it points out, expressly forbidden by the laws to which the Rugby Unions have aubscribod and under which they have played for many years. When this is remembered, any claim that members of the New Zealand team should receive 10s a day during their absence from the Dominion must be dismissed as out of the question. But precedent and reason alike support the view that out-of-pocket expenses should to a limited amount be refunded to them. If it were not that the New Zealand Union seems to have completely waived the point, the claim that the players should be entitled to be recouped these expenses is one which might have been strongly and, presumably, irresistibly pressed. Our contemporary suggests that the alternative to a payment of this kind must bo either that the team which will be sent Home will be not fully representative or else—which will be more unfortunate—that there will be clandestine payments. It is certain that no team can be as representative of New Zealand as any team should be which visits Great Britain with the great reputation of the team of 1905 to sustain if there is to be no allowance whatever to the members. The beet players cannot all afford to leave their employment for several months and to bear all the expenses to which they must inevitably be put while they are away. This, it is pointed out, raises a much wider and a much more important question than that of the decision of the English Union as it affects the New Zealand team. It is the question whether Rugby football is to remain, as cricket and lawn tennis are, Imperial pastimes or whether, through the “diehard” conservatism at the football authorities at Home, it is to become a game which only a small class of men will be able to afford to play.