INQUIRY IN AMERICA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 134, 3 December 1938, Page 23

INQUIRY IN AMERICA

Although the decision of the N.Z.A.A.A. at its annual meeting this week to inquire from the American Amateur Athletic Union whether it will sanction a tour of New Zealand by Americans next season gives cause for some satisfaction to those who have advocated such a visit, at the same time it is a pity that such a course was not taken well before the opening of the present season, instead of relying on the possibility of teams from the British' Empire coming to the Dominion during the Centennial celebrations. It was pointed out recently that with the Olympic Games in Finland in 1940 there appeared little prospect

of Empire teams coming here before the Games, and since then the British Amateur Athletic Board has advised the N.Z.A.A.A. that it is unable to accept the invitation to send a team. With the possible exception of Australia, the officials of other Empire countries who have been written to will probably reply in the same strain. It may be possible to get a satisfactory team from America, although the frontrank American athletes also will be concentrating on Olympic representation. However, the field is wider here, and it is really only this factor that lends any hope of the N.Z.A.A.A. inquiry being successful in this quarter. This really was the season to have a good American team in the Dominion and with the Wellington Centre coach, Mr. A. L. Fitch, back in America earlier in the year there was a golden opportunity of being able to accomplish something worth while. It looks very much as though the N.Z.A.A.A. council has missed the bus.