TOO MANY TOURS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 221, 18 September 1928, Page 6

TOO MANY TOURS

THERE will be almost general agreement with the complaint of the manager of the Otago Rugby League team visiting Auckland, that sport is unduly transgressing on business. Mr Harry Divers, who voices the complaint, may be taken the more seriously because, while actually on tour with footballers, he condemns such tours as being grossly overdone. Club interests are said to suffer by the frequency with which players are taken on tour, and, as for business, it is a very good thing for the country that all its footballers and cricketers are not “stars,” else they would almost always be touring and their employers would have very little service from them. The cost of the present tour of the Dunedin team will be £7OO. The question is: “Is it worth it?” Once in every three or four years, yes; but every year, no. And the wider question arises as to whether sport generally is not made too great a fetish of in this country. It is a question which needs serious consideration. A few weeks back there was a spirited controversy in this newspaper on the allegation that the up-River Maoris wasted too much time on football. They do not appear to be set too wholesome an example of abstention in sport by the pakehas.