NOT BLACK

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 281, 22 July 1932, Page 8

NOT BLACK

STRIBLING DISAPPOINTED IN NEW ZEALAND RUGBY TEAM. z ' SYDNEY, July 1. A local League enthusiast was induced by a votary of the "only genuine" Rugby game to go and see the All "Blacks play. He bore it pretty wel1 till half-time, and then asked his companion in an aggrieved tone: "Sure we haven't come to the wrong ground?" That was not quite how young Bill Stribling, the American boxer, expressed himself, but he meant very much the same. He had been persuaded to see some "real" football, and he was there, along with "Paw" Stribling, his parent manager, an inseparable companion, and his pal, Clyde Chastain, the Texan cruiser-weight. Apparently the party were disappointed because the All Blacks were not aboriginal, at least in colour, and they had certainly expected something a great deal more lively and inspiring than what they got. Young Stribling, though he missed the finer points of the game, was quite clear about his own coneeption of football. He advised that one of the wings who h'esitated about a heavy tackle "ought to be pulled out for good"; and he was very anxious to know "why somebody doesn't stop that fellow running away" and "why don't they hit that guy who hasn't got the ball?" Plainly the "caveman" methods popularised on American "gridirons" have made too deep an impression on this young man to permit him to express any satisfaction with the rather colourless and anaemic game that we call football here. It is a pity that the Stribling party did not go up to Brisbane to see the last League Test, when, as Voltaire complained about "Hamlet," the play ceased because there were not enough characters left alive on the stage to keep it going or to bury the dead.