A Diary of Sport M.P. DONNELLY IN THE ARMY

Southland Times, Issue 24239, 24 September 1940, Page 9

A Diary of Sport M.P. DONNELLY IN THE ARMY

Holder Of Redpath Cup

NORTH FULL BACK ON SATURDAY

M. P. Donnelly, who has been selected ,as full-back for the North Island team in the Services Rugby match at Wellington on Saturday, is the present holder of the Redpath Cup, a trophy awarded annually by the New Zealand Cricket Council for meritorious batting.

Donnelly, who first came into the limelight with a remarkable string of scores for the New Plymouth Boys’ High School first eleven, was included in the Taranaki Hawke Cup side when at college. His progress continued, and as a Wellington Plunket .Shield representative he gained a place in the New Zealand side which toured Great Britain in 1937. On his return he transferred to Canterbury, where, after an indifferent 1938-39 season, he struck peak form with the bat in the shield games last summer. He did useful work with the ball, too. Donnelly recently played at half-back for Canterbury University College when it defeated the Otago University Rugby fifteen. Champion Sculler In Army Six times champion singles sculler of New Zealand, R. B. Smith, of Auckland, is now a soldier at Trentham, training as an N.C.O. in the engineers section. Smith is the Dominion’s best amateur sculler of all time, having surpassed the record of McGrath, of Otago, who in 11 years won the singles title on six occasions. Five of Smith’s successes were scored in succession. Smith first won the New Zealand title in 1932. He was first past the judge at Picton in 1935, but was disqualified. From 1936 to 1940 he was unbeaten. He has been successful in the New Zealand double sculls three times: with L Johnson in 1934 and with A. Morey in 1937 and 1938. , ~ The point that is most remarkable about Smith’s performances is that in New Zealand regattas he has never been unplaced. He has competed in pair-oar and eights events besides single and double sculls. The Auckland provincial single sculls title has been won by Smith nine times in succession since 1932. He has twice represented the Auckland province in eights, in 1936 and 1938, on the latter occasion being stroke, while he was also an Empire Games representative in 1938 in both tire singles and doubles. The captain of the Auckland Club, H. Jellie, and members of Smith’s crew in recent years, R. Porter, C. Chamberlain and G. Oxspring, met Smith before his departure, and presented him with a wallet.

Opperman Joins Up Recently Hubert Opperman, the noted cyclist, entered the Melbourne Town Hall recruiting depot and enlisted in the A.I.F. He was passed as medically fit. He thus follows in the footsteps of his father, who served with the A.I.F. in the 1914-18 war. Regarded by experts as the greatest endurance cyclist of all time, Opperman twice represented Australia in the Tour de France, won the 80l d’or 24-hours tandem paced race in Paris in 1928, the Paris-Brest-Paris race of 725 miles in one stage in 1931, and other important contests. He holds the 24-hour motor-paced record and world unpaced record for 24 hours on the road and track. N.Z. Boxer In Navy

D’Arcy Heeney, the well-known amateur boxer who won the New Zealand welterweight title in three successive years, has qualified as an engine-room artificer at an English naval base. Heeney is a nephew of the famous Tom Heeney and a son of Mr and Mrs J. Heeney, of Gisborne. In addition to doing well as a boxer, he also made a good showing as a Rugby footballer. Woman Cricket Coach

Ripon Grammar School, in Yorkshire, for the first time has a woman on its teaching staff, and one of her subjects is cricket. She is Mrs J. H. Brown, who has joined her husband on the staff for the duration of the war. By taking the place of a young master called up recently she has helped to solve the problem that is now facing hundreds of English schools—shortage of masters. The problem has become acute since the age at which masters are reserved from military'service was raised from 25 to 30. Mrs Brown is teaching science 1 and mathematics, as well as cricket. She is a great success. Springboks Bally To Colours In spite of the acute division in South African politics on the subject of the war between followers of General Smuts and General Hertzog, the sportsmen of the Union seem to be offering themselves for service as freely as anywhere in the Empire, and some of the Cape Town Rugby clubs are very hard hit. The Villagers Club, which started the season with 120 active members, can barely muster three teams now, and its senior fifteen has begun to look very scratchy. The Hamiltons Club, which was Gerry Brand’s club had lost in the middle of July 107 out of 180 members. Maitland started with seven teams, but in July had only three. It is estimated that 50 per cent, of the active eligible sportsmen of Cape Town are serving in some capacity or another. Many of them are probably participating in the Kenya campaign. At any rate, appeals viere made for sports equipment for men serving “somewhere in Africa.”

Famous Green Under Fire Thousands of bowlers in New Zealand and Australia' must have heard the 8.8. C. broadcast of the German' air attack on Southampton a few weeks ago, when one bomb fell in the corner of a bowling green. There are nine bowling greens in Southampton, belonging to seven clubs, so it might have been any of these. A bomb uprooted a tree, which was flung to the roof of the pavilion. “Jack Thrower” suggests in the August issue of Melbourne Bowls that the details identify the green as the famous Southampton green, the oldest ■in the world, which was constructed before 1299, and has been played on ever since. He refers his readers to a photograph of this green which appeared in the programme of the Victorian centennial bowling tournament of 1934. Sure enough, the evidence seems fairly conclusive, for the photograph shows two trees at the other side of the green and one at the corner close to the pavilion, with four funnels and the foremast of a huge liner in the background, apparently less than 100yds away.