Footballers Losing Scotland & Ireland In New Zealand Wash

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 71, 19 July 1950, Page 7

Footballers Losing Scotland & Ireland In New Zealand Wash

Tradition has it that King John lost most of his baggage in The Wash. The touring British Isles Rugby team have done even better. They have lost almost all of Ireland and the greater part of Scotland.

When the tour began, the team wore jerseys carrying an attractive breast shield. About three inches deep and two and a-half inches wide, the shield was divided into four panels, ?ach representing one of the four Rugby Unions. The top left panel bore the red rose of England surmounting light green foliage on a white background. On the top right was the thistle and embracing leaves of Scotland in silver on a blue backing. The lower left panel carries the green shamrock of Ireland on a small silver shield, while the fourth panel bore the Prince of Wales feathers on a scarlet background. The shield was edged by silver cord and the sub-division into panels was marked by twin strips of the same material. The jersey panel was a smaller duplicate of that carried on the team blazer. During the tour, however, the necessity of washing the jerseys after each match began to show on the panel. Almost from the beginning of the tour the Irish panel began to fray and before long most of these panels had disappeared. More recently the Scottish panel has similarly suffered. It is possible in many photographs of the players to notice the gaps caused by the disappearance of these panels. A suggestion was made in the South Island that they were being "souvenired" by laundry workers: a more reasonable explanation is that the shield as a whole was too delicately constructed for use on a long and strenuous tour.