FOOTBALL.

Motueka Star, Volume III, Issue 115, 19 September 1902, Page 5

FOOTBALL.

The inter-island football match played on the Athletic Park Wellington, last Saturday constitutes the chief event of New Zealand Rugby during recent years. A Wellington journal says that Saturday’s game was one of the most successful, from all points of view that has been held in Wellington. The gate takings amounted to <£23o. The New Zealand Rugby Union took out a I special accident insurance on every player taking part iu ti e game. At the banquet held in the evening, Mr A. D. Thomson proposed the health of the referee, and spoke of him as a true sportsman, whose decisions were always above suspicion, and not to be cavilled at by players of either side. The Rev C. Harper, of Palmerston North, in responding thanked the union for the honor that had been done him. He considered he had that day reached the culmination of his position as a sportsman. Some people had 1 emonstrated with him on the amount of patronage he gave to football, but the fact was that he carried his religion into his sport just as he did into his sermons. That did not make him a referee, -though ; he had had to study besides. And that reminded him that there was great need for study of the rules amongst players. Some of them had but faint acquaintance with the rules of the game. Reverting to the aspect of football as an aid to the building up of a sound, moral nature, the rev. gentleman said it was a very g ,od t dug for thirty men, half of them very much out of temper-, to have to do what they were told just because they were told. It had an excellent effect. He thanked the players for the manner in which he had been supported. As an old Christ’s College boy, he had once had 8 autn Island sympathies ; bv residence in the North Island he had achieved a sympathy for the North ; and when he went on to the ground that day he found himself in the beatific position that he di 1 not care a snap of Iris fingers wl ica team won —and therefore his position was afsinecure.