FOOTBALL

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1262, 25 June 1914, Page 2

FOOTBALL

H. S. Targett, a Sydney Rugby authority, makes the following appeal to the Rugby players of New South Wales through the medium of the “Sun,” the intended visit of the New Zealand team to Australia towards the end of the present season being responsible for the humble entreaty. In a few weeks, says the Sydney enthusiast, the finest exponent of Union Rugby alive will invade our shores with the view of adding more scalps to their collective belts. They rather have the bulge on us too. They are as strong as ever they were. But our ranks have been sadly decimated by defections. Without playing a foul game they play a hard one. We don’t. I implore (1) our men to play a hard game. I suggest diffidently that Union Rugby is not Postman’s Knock. The invaders will tackle our men like 14 furies and a cyclone, with a typhoon thrown in for luck. I implore (2) our players to go for ankles and not necks. The New Zealanders will work out their system of attack on blackboards before they entertain the onlookers with a war-cry. I implore (3) our players to work up combination too. Brilliant individual play in football is fine stuff for the gallery to enthuse about, but it does not win

games. The visitors, who took the game seriously, will be conditioned men, one and all. I implore (4) our players to meet them on common ground in this important respect. If you’ve got to run a mile race, it is no good being tuned to the minute for a hundred yards’ sprint. And our friends from the Dominion will play to the whistle—they always do. I implore (5) our reps, to do the same. This is a lot of imploring to do in half a column, but there is a stern necessity for it (continued the writer.) The games already played ifi the First Grade Competition sugget that (1) our players fancy that they are in a parlor instead of a football field; that (2) high collaring is the rule rather than the exception; that (3) the players go into the game without any preconceived notions of attack; that (4) not 20 per cent, of the players in First Grade football are in good enough condition to go at their top for 80 minutes; and that (5) our players take the least excuse to let up. There are some more little imperfections which have cropped up during the playing of the present competition, but these will do to go on with.

The great granddam of Kennymore (Brown Bess), the Two Thousand Guineas winner, was got by Musket. With the exception of the Prince of Wales Handicap and the Great Northern Steeplechase, all the races at the Great Northern meeting were cut up among Auckland owners, a circumstance that has not happened for many a year.