The All Blacks.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18233, 18 November 1924, Page 8

The All Blacks.

It will astonish if it does not shock New Zealand to-day to read what a section of the British Press has said about our touring footballers. No one is shocked by a charge which he knows to be false, and we can say at once that to call the All Blacks "ugly" players, players whose "tactics are not "nice," "unnecessarily violent," '' barefaced obstructionists," " trip"pers," "hackers," "slingers of fists," "unscrupulous," "acorners of the pif"side rule," and so on, will merely m§ko the Dominion wonder if Britain has already lost heart. We cannot say here on the other side of the 'vforld, and shall not exactly know until we have our correspondents' report?, and in particular the report by Mr Harrop —whose brilliant little studies of the successive games are of special value —whether our men played a needlessly hard game on Saturday last, or merely a furiously swift one. As it turned out. they might very easily have spared some of their enorgy and still won; but if they made the mistake of regarding the defence with respect, and chose to play hard football to the very end of the game, that is not a matter of which the British public should complain. Even though the 1 defence erumpled into an "undisciplined mob" the attack was entitled to regard the game as a preparation for other games, and it is surely the desiro of the Press and public that the visitors should do more than make victory secure. Tho fact is, the critics go so far that no one in New Zealand will take them i seriously, but. what they have said I would be serious if we could regard it as the voice of England. If it were not tho case that it is the "stunt" Press which has supplied those comments—the Sunday journals and the purely Bensational dailies —the Dominions would bo compelled to wonder I whether England is still tho place in which athletes arc sportsmen first and winners of contests afterwards. would eo please tho real. oi

the world, or be so distressing to the Dominions, as an indication that the Englishman, when thoroughly beaten, can complain, like the most despised of his rivals. "We should not like to think that the responsible Press of Britain will lend any support, in this matter, to the makers of vulgar sensations. It is pleasant to note that Colonel Philip Trevor, one of our own special correspondents, takes a wholly sportsmanlike view in the Dail} "Telegraph." The New Zealanders, he says, won "handsomely, brilliantly, "and deservedly," and if is wise it will thank them for "rubbing "in the need of pace even when the •'•rubbing hurts." That, we are turc, is the voice of the real England.