THE INTERPROVINCIAL FOOTBALL TEAM.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 412, 7 October 1875, Page 4

THE INTERPROVINCIAL FOOTBALL TEAM.

The Cross haa the following remarks on the Auckland Interprovincial Football Team: They have been defeated everywhere, it is true, but the price of their opponents’ victories are visible in the strained gait, scratched faces, and black eyes of several of the team. The last match played was at Taranaki, when, as one of our players put it, they “ were hardly able to crawl into the field,” and Taranaki won very easily. What might have been the result had the first game been played at Dunedin instead of Wellington, it is idle now to speculate on. Our men confess that they were not so good as some of their opponents, but they all admit that their standing up in a state of great physical prostration only two hours after lauding in Wellington, to face the rushes of a heavy team, working well together, and perfectly fresh and strong, was almost a piece of madness. They were knocked about to such an extent that they lost that elan which is so necessary an element of the game. To point to individual damage, we may mention that Henderson returned with a “ lovely black eye Pilling has got a tremendous knee, and is very bad ; Woon’s appearance is “ fearful Ellis shows pretty little abrasions of the cuticle of the frontispiece, the nasal organ, &c, and has a “ legSharland has been left behind in Taranaki, with a bad shoulder ; Whitaker has got a very bad leg ; Peacock’s instep is not altogether the thing ; Burgess has caught it in the ankle, and had to be carried off the field in Christchurch ; Nolan is also “ very bad.” Indeed, the glory of hard knocks never received greater exemplification than in the late trip of the Auckland Football Team to the South.