THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, September 14, 1936. RUGBY FOOTBALL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22985, 14 September 1936, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, September 14, 1936. RUGBY FOOTBALL

It was surely a somewhat odd arrangement under which only two matches against a New Zealand team were included in the programme of the Australian team that is now visiting the Dominion. The effect of it might clearly have been to leave the question of Rugby supremacy undecided as between the two countries, in which event the cup, presented by Viscount Bledisloe for competition between them, would have remained in Australia. The margin, moreover, between the two teams at the test match in Wellington was so small as to excite the expectation that the Australians, playing at Carisbrook on Saturday under conditions favourable to them, might succeed in turning the tables on their opponents This expectation would have been strengthened in the earlier stages of this second match by the dash which the visitors, opening up the game with captivating brilliance, infused into their play. There has been no match

in Dunedin that has provided interesting and even exciting incidents in larger measure than this encounter did. To the person who can appreciate Rugby football, as most of the crowds that attend important matches can, there was hardly a dull moment in the whole eighty minutes’ play. But in the second spell it was the New Zealand team that furnished the thrills for the spectators. There is Scriptural authority for the statement that the race is not to the swift. The palm may be secured by the contestant of superior endurance, who can last longest and can see a thing through to the finish. And on Saturday the New Zealand team wore the opposing side down. It was the All Blacks who made the pace in the second spell. The New Zealand forwards, playing then with a combination and a verve which they had not previously shown, dominated the play and were ably supported by their backs. The team as a whole played as a New Zealand public expects a New Zealand Rugby representative team to play. The Australians were, ds they were the first to admit, outclassed. But they will have the satisfaction of knowing that, by keeping the game open, they played right to the end the sort of football that gives delight to the spectators.

A very full season of Rugby (football in Dunedin is drawing to its close. The Otago team has two more important fixtures, and in each, provided it is successful next Saturday, the Ranfurly Shield will be at stake. There may even be a third match, but whether there will or will not be will presumably be contingent on the retention by Otago of the Ranfurly Shield and on the determination by the New Zealand Rugby Union of the question, if it is referred to it, whether Hawke’s Bay may issue a belated challenge for the possession of that ■trophy. The Otago Union was certainly not called on to accept a challenge for a mid-week match issued at the latest possible date by a Union which had apparently counted on the Ranfurly Shield being transferred during the season to the keeping of a northern union. In any case a union which is required during a season to meet eight challenges may reasonably be said to have done all that may be fairly demanded of it if interclub football under its jurisdiction is not to be disastrously neglected.