CANTERBURY RIFLE ASSOCIATION.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1810, 9 December 1879, Page 3

CANTERBURY RIFLE ASSOCIATION.

INTERPROVINCIAL MATCH. A meeting of members of the Canterbury Rifle Association was held last night at Cookaon's Commercial Hotel, Captain Warner in the chair. The Chairman said they had mot to discuss the Interprovincial Rifle Match with the Otago Rifle Association. They were aware that Otago had fixed the date of the match for the day after the Canterbury Anniversary Day, and the consequence would be that a great number of the Canterbury men would be unable to go without foregoing the holiday which they were unwilling to do. Mr Appleby read the correspondence that had passed between himself and the secretary of the Otago Rifle Association. The points of interest referred to was the fact of the date of the match being fixed for the 17th inst. It was also stated that the North Otago Rifle Association intended to sond a team of ten men to Dunedin to compete, and it was hoped tbat the Canterbury Association would be able to take part in it. The ranges for the present year, it was arranged, were not to exceed 600 yards, and to meet the wishes of the Canterbury Association tho number of competitors in the Interprovincial Match were to be limited to ten aside. A conversation ensued, and various suggestions were thrown out as to the best means of getting over the difficulty. Mr Appleby said he had sent out a number of circulars to the local members, and the answers he had up to the present received were decidedly unfavorable to sacrificing the Anniversary Day, at tha same time there was a general desire that the annual match should not full through. Mr Appleby suggested that a challenge might be sent to fire a match with North Otago, the Canterbury men to fire at Christchurch on the same day that the Otago men fired in Dunedin. He moved—" That in view of the North Otago Association firing a match with South Otago, a challenge be sent to the former to fire an annual match on the same terms and at the same dates as the annnal interprovincial match with the South Otago Association, the firing to take place this year on the 19th December, at Dunedin; also, that in the event of the Canterbury Rifle Association not being able to send a team to Dunedin, owing to the shortness of notice being given, and to the meeting in Dunedin clashing with the Canterbury public holiday, the permission of the Otago Association be asked to allow the Canterbury Association to fire on its own ground." Lieutenant Strange seconded the resolution, which was agreed to. A general wish was expressed that every exertion be made to have the match fired, and to that end a committee was appointed to have a personal interview with the intending competitors, the result to be made known this evening.