NEW ZEALAND FOOTBALLERS AT HOME.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 8327, 19 December 1905, Page 5

NEW ZEALAND FOOTBALLERS AT HOME.

Strained Relations.

(By Telegraph — Press Association.)

Wellington, Last Night,

It was definitely known in town on Saturday that the relations between certain sections of the New Zealand football team were very much strained. This can easily be gathered from the contents of a number of letters received by the last mail by the friends of the Otago members. The trouble apparently has arisen out of the old sore feeling over the appointment of Mr J. Duncan as " coach." The letters iudicate from the first that the Auckland members set themselves up in sharp opposition to Duncan, and then to the Otago members in general. A number of others, including Stead, have sided with the Auckland contingent, and the general result has been that every attempt made by Duncan to assert his authority has been met with open hostility. At meetings of the team while on the field he has been simply ignored. "He is just nobody !" is a way one writer sums the position up. It is ' not possible to confine the trouble to the question between • Duncan and the Aucklanders. Certain other Otago members have been drawn into it, and so bitterly that it is rumoured that a well-known Otago player applied argumentum ad homiuum to one of the Aucklanders, and gave him a good thrashing. Rightly "or wrongly, the Otago members also believe that owing to the influence of the Northern opposition they are being kept out of the matches to which their claims as players entitle them. Says one of them : " None of us except Casey is getting a hearing at all, and they would leave Steve out too, only they can't do without him, because he's the best hooker they've got."