ENGLISH RUGBY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 276, 16 July 1932, Page 3

ENGLISH RUGBY

TOO MUCH OLITENESS ENTERING INTO GAME. "Taking the game as a whole, Rugby football in the Home unions lacked during the last few months the type of man who is likely to be very useful in a shipwreck, but who faels lost at a dance or a picinic," writes E. H. D. Sewell, in a London paper. "There has been too much politeness, so to speak. Some of the efforts at tackling have heen n-early girlish. Indeed, if Rugby were a possible game for girls it is probable that their tackling would be anything but gentle! That Rugby to be properly played must have its rough moments is undeniable. As things are our form of it needs more healthy rudeness of the right kind. "Between that "and foul play is a very wide chasm. Fortunately, with the greater gentleness in tackling, by comparison with the best pre-war kind which' has come in, read foulness has gone out. Fisticuffs on the spur of the moment is loss of self-control, and, though unpardonable, yet is not foul. I am not advocating fisticuffs. Foulness such as tripping, holding the player who has not got but who soon may get the ball, running between the tackler and the tacklee; shadow tackling and obstruction are all fouler than is the hitting of a provocative player with the fist. "I saw no tripping' this season and very little holding, but, I am sorry to say, a good deal of foul obstruction, shielding, and shadow-tackling. The worry of it is that it was all done by the older players! But as most of these perhaps fortunately, will be on the shelf in a season or two, let us return to the coming-on generation — to some of whom we shall be looking in our attempt to repel the next invasion, which is by New Zealand four or five seasons henee."