THE CROWNING VICTORY.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 3, 27 September 1937, Page 6

THE CROWNING VICTORY.

The result of the final Rugby Test rnatch at Auckland on Saturd&y will doubties? have come as soire thing of a solar-plexus blow to the many New Zealanders^who fonlly entertuined the idea that at their own game the A!i Blacks were invincible. Ib« Springboks have very decisc ively asseirt'd their superijiity and have gone through their tour with but one cit-eat as a blot on their escuti i con. There are some, too. who in the liglit oi Saturday.'s game a.e hcylj nsng to woadei whether perhaps even that defeat was not to some extent the result of bad luck or perhaps of some slaeknesg on thevisitors' part — such is the queer result of a revulsion of popular feeling. In any event, there cannot be any question as to the merit of their latest exhibition, and New Zealand must, just as gracefully as it may, yield up the laurels to them for the time being and hope for better fortune attending the next heroio struggle. In the meantime there is no need for us all to regard the final outoome as something of a national disaster. In games, as in the more serious undertakings of life, both capacity and fortune must J^uctuate, and next time the tido may turn our way again. And, after all, supremacy at Rugby football, is not — as onlooking strangers in our midst during the last few weeks must have thought — the be-all and end-all of the aspirations of this little country. There aro things of very much more serious import than defcat on the football field bappening, and XJOssibly tbe closer attention they demaud will now be directed to them.