COMING COLTS.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXV, Issue 10318, 29 January 1927, Page 10

COMING COLTS.

YOUTH IN ALL SPORTS. The prospect of youth in sport in Australia has never been brighter than at present (says a writer in “Smith’s Weekly"). The path to highest honours may be rougher than ever, but a new generation of champions is already m being. What's mpre important still, perhaps, is that a new school of officials is obviously determined that the. youngsters will have a fair start. Take cricket. For years now there’s been a cry for new blood.

“A new man! How old is he.' Twenty-six. That’s no use. Wo want them at 18, like Trumper, Hill, and Macartney.” That has been typical of tho situation since the war.

But now there are signs the boys will have their innings. JN.B. YV. is particularly fortunate in having selectors with the courage to regard extreme youth, not as a handicap but as an asset.

Archie Jackson (IB 1 ), run out at 8b in his first Sheffield match while striving to keep the strike for himself and the side, leg-before at 100 in bis second Shield match when the circumstances under which he started to bat would have appalled many a proved Test star, is being compared to the greatest stylists in Australian cricket history.

For tlie matches in Add aide or Melbourne a medium paced Sydney grade bowler might have been called upon to reinforce the attack. But no! The selectors sent for 20-year-okl M’Guirk, who was playing junior cricket in Goulburn last season. One can point to a dozen seasoned grade cricketers of ten or more years’ experience—regular run-getters. But young Don Bradman, from Bowral. 18 years of age, and a century maker in his first grade game, deserves more limelight, and is getting it. ltymill began as a minor for South Australia. But who can forget the wonderful first season of Alexander, the Adelaide’ University boy who faced the reputedly greatest bowlers in Australia, and began to play them all over the field, not stiltedly, but as if he were engaged in a picnic match.

For years the Australian XI. has been a close concern. Experience has been even more than the prime qualification for admittance. Now the old hands are dropping out more or less

, gracefully. The kids will have the op- * portunity to gain “the experience” j of which they have been robbed, and I youthful enterprise may replace much 1 of the stodge of recent seasons. I in tennis, the. monotony with which the finals in all the big tournaments I have been confined to a select few of the champions has already been broken. It needed Crawford’s great fight against Patterson in Melbourne to convince Australians that they had another player of genuine Davis Cup rank. He lias brightened the whole outlook of national tennis. His capture with Hopman —-who at 19 is but a vear older—of the New S. Wales doubles title last season, was significant in itself. The State’s doubles play was extraordinarily weak. That it will improve out of all bounds in the next few seasons is certain. It is in swimming, however, that the youngster’s domination is most pronounced. Charlton’s voutli contributed to the popularity wliicli skilful victories won for him. ' It is only two seasons ago that sprinter Frank Doyle left school. Claire Couldwell held open titles at sixteen. Ten days ago, at eighteen, she was beaten by Edna Davev, aged seventeen, for the half-mile championship of New South Wales in a second 1 faster time than Claire accomplished last year. Bcttv Taw. twelve years, is, perhaps, the world’s fastest swimmer _ at her age. Week after week schoolgirls are reducing records at a rate that only a few years ago would hav been regarded as incredible. Youth had its say when veteran walking champion G. R. Parker, who was an Olympian in 1920, was outpaced and outstayed by twenty-three, year-old Victorian E. S. Sutherland. There are signs in the boxing world that the veterans are on the wane. -Australia’s best middle-weight, Billy Edwards, is only twenty. Bantam champion Stan Thurbon is only twentv-one. The' spirit of youth, in a game in which mental control plays as big a part as skill, was exemplified at Adelaide when' Len Nettlefold, at eighteen, won the amateur golf championship of Australia. A. G .Ashton’s recent deeds on tire Woollongong links are phenomenal. He is only sixteen. Every now and then one reads of excellent rounds by L. W. Hore (aged eighteen), J. Hughes (seventeen), Stan Keane (seventeen), and Harry Hattersley (eighteen), in Sydney Club golf. Australia’s prospects in international sport have never been brighter. The youngsters will soon have control and under modern methods they will have a shorter spell in the limelight than the veterans of old, for they, in their turn, are likely to be displaced by a generation of athletes now in their infancy. It is the sign of the age—of the youth of the age. Picked out by experts as a prospective world-beater, Len Jones, of Lithgow, is one of the finest motorcycle racers in Australia. He drove a car at eleven years of age, and eight years later rode in his first race at the Penrith Speedway. He crashed badly, but a year later took up racing at the Speedway Royal. In three months’ racing he won over £4OO, and established a world’s record (dirt track) at the New Castle Speedway. Len is just eighteen years of ago.