RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31119, 23 July 1966, Page 42

RANDOM REMINDER

VISITING DAY

Since the first up-and-under at Invercargill six weeks ago, the Lions Rugby team has had what is usually referred to as a chequered career. It has lost matches—and players; it has had a draw, it has gained some victories. Today the team goes to Lancaster Park to do battle with Canterbury, and if there is a feeling that the visiting players are better cast as Christians than Lions, the unexpected can happen; man bites dog, occasionally. It seems that the Lions came here ill-prepared for the chills of a southern winter and have apparently been perplexed, for instance, by so much binding in the marsh. The term “block-

ing” seems to have puzzled them too because an assiduous search of the rules and the writing of Rugby fail to disclose any reference as to how it began, or became legal. Perhaps it didn’t. These British Isles players are babes in an antipodean wood. They have not grown to the realisation that if you can put an interpretation on the rules which suits your Rugby personality, or commit illegalities so regularly and efficiently that they become accepted as part of the game, you have a loose head start. And they have not yet realised that Rugby is really an exercise in logistics. The more poundage at the

proper place at the same time, the better: it grinds down the opposition no end: beat them up front, with as much physical contact as possible, and if a few minor injuries are inflicted, the quicker the process. It’s old fashioned, now, just to get the ball and try to run like mad. Unsophisticated, unrealistic, quite absurd, really. Yet the Canterbury crowd today, with all its reputation for parochialism, will be wishing for some of the uninhibited running and passing for which previous Lions teams are gratefully remembered. Perhaps irs almost immoral to think on those lines: but It conjures up such pleasant pictures.