"OFF-SIDE MAC." AND RUGBY SIDELIGHTS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 864, 9 July 1910, Page 7

"OFF-SIDE MAC." AND RUGBY SIDELIGHTS.

Sir,—"Off-side Mac." is always breezy and interesting when he _ writes 011 Rugby subjects, but in his "K-ugby Sidelights" of Juno 25 he is, I think, too kind to the present-day player anU (naturally enougn perhaps) does not care to say enough about the players of his own day. My opinion is that it would do some of tho current incapables good to let them know plump and plain that the Rugby game is. going out, and going out pretty• fast—lchabod is written all over its habitation from the garret' to the meat safe. And it doesn't make tho present style of player any. brighter to mention (as sonie of the papers do) thirteen' or even fifteen names asido for good play and "superhuman efforts." That journalistic dodgo is getting pretty threadbare; even tho players can see through it. Anyhow, that's another' story. What I would liko to see "Off-side Mac" taeklo in his next are tho following questions;—

(1) Is there one club team, either in Wellington or the Dominioil, that is trained as fit. to last out a fast game as tho players were from, say, IS9I-96? (2) Is there a city team here that is ever trained in scientific theory (blackboard, etc.) as the players were in tho time mentioned?. (3) Isn't it a fact that a thirty-yards kick into touch is clapped nowadays, while a sixty-yards kick would have excited no remark in the years alluded to ? (4) Isn't it past dispute that the art of straight-running by backs has been lost, and, for every passing rush that gets through nowadays, about 1008 are driven on to tho lee shore of touch? (5) Is it not truo that the ball used to come out from the old-time scrum like clock-work, and now it mostly , staggers out of the modern. jumble with tho gait and pace of a drunk- man? (6) Could it be contradicted that in every' scrum you see at the Athletic Park (or any other park for that matter) on Saturdays four out of tho seven men in it are resting instead of pushing? (7) Is it not'solemn fact that, in every team to-day, a certain portion do little more ' than walk, after the play,, saving themselves for an opportune spurt in the open when •the play gets near the line, or the grandstand,, or the reporters? (8) Would,forwards of that kind have been tolerated a day in an 1894-95 team? (9) Aren't tho rules now in such a hopeless tangle' that no referee to-day can enforce them? (10) Isn't a referee therefore, dependent on the good will of tho barrackers. and press, awl has to trim his. sails accordingly, with bad results forjt|ie g?ni<?,? , -.; When .'''Mac." has dealt with the foregoing he might profitably fill iiV his spare time by .considering- this: If a team consisting of forwards like "Mac.'.' himself, Tom Ellison, and. some more, with backs of, say, the G.-uie stamp, were let- .loose on the All Tilnck team recently in Sydney, wouldn't the polico have to interfere to save the latter from being-shoved right over the edge of tho universe?—l. am, etc., "SEEN THE OLD 'IJNS."