RUGBY AND THE CITY TEAM.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17410, 24 May 1928, Page 7

RUGBY AND THE CITY TEAM.

(To the Editor.) Sir. —As a regular patron of rugby football in Hamilton since my arrival here from Wellington five years ago, may I have a little space in your valuable and widely read paper, to call attention to what I characterise as unfair treatment of the City team by a large percentage of the public who witness senior play in this town. As the years have rolled on this antagonism appears to have become enlarged instead of a diminishing quantity. It savours very much of bad taste and ill manners to be continually decrying a team went on the playing merit and all round sportmanship that City can claim to, the public should wholeheartedly applaud. I hold no brief for City over any other team but I fell confident that my assertion is not idle when I state that they play the best football in Hamilton. Their fine record over several seasons is proof of that. The frequency with which slurring remarks anent City players are heard at Rugby Park makes one query very dubiously the fairmindedness of many patrons of ru#by in this town. If the City players are so continuously guilty of the illegal and reprehensible tactics which these so-called unbiassed barraekers allege them to be, it says little for the qualifications of the local referees. However I am prepared to support the men with the whistle whose deliberations indicate that City can play the game with (at least) as much freedom from anything of an untoward nature as any of the other teams. lam afraid, sir, that City’s consistent football efficiency as a team has warped the fair judgment of many of our barraekers and given them a spleen which they must vent at all oosts. These raucous voiced individuals who, alas, are on the increase numerically, while condemning the City player and his tactics in club football are, strange to say, the very first to applaud the same player when pursuing a similar plan of operations in the wider sphere of representative games. If the policy of condemnation is warranted in the one case why not in the other? It is with no desire to bolster up City’s case that I take up the pen but in justice to the senior members of their club, the quality of the rugby they play and in furtherance of the good name cf the sport in this town, City are due a fairer deal than they have had in past seasons, or has been extended them during the two games they have played this season. —I am etc. SPECTATOR.