ROSY SKIES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 37, 6 May 1927, Page 6

ROSY SKIES

End of the Tour MAORIS ABROAD SIDELIGHTS AND COMMENT By H. MAKARINI Every sporting tour produces history that does not find its way home through the ordinary channels of the current press cables. Not until the tour is over and already fading into the mist of forgotten things can certain happy little incidents and critical judgments be recorded. At the end of every touring team’s progress there comes sudden and welcome relief from the tedious restrictions of training. The last match has been played, responsibilities, for the moment, are at an end, and in care-free abandon the players become ordinary, unfettered mortals once more. For the 1924-25 All Blacks, who took their unbeaten record very seriously, the break came after the defeat of England at Twickenham. That night the skies assumed a rosy hue. Hundreds of New Zealanders in London pressed their bountiful hospitality on the members of the team. The English Rugby Union’s “chits” for smokes and other luxuries had gone unspent during the rigorous days of Spartan training, but now they went merrily westward, and accumulated piles of them were gambled recklessly away.

MAORIS IN CANADA In the case of the Maori team, whose tour is more recent history, the final freedom did not come until Vancouver was reached. Even for the matches through Canada, unofficial though they were, the team stayed in strict training. The last fortnight in Vancouver, however, was full of merry interludes. Some of the team paid a week-end visit to Seattle, and found that Canadian hospitality had an equal across the border. They found also, that the Canadians are not ignorant of the principles of fast and scientific football, so that the matches played in British Columbia were not so one-sided as the scores might have suggested. Every touring team discovers, as its schedule advances, that it has certain passengers to carry. Some men do not live up to their reputations, perhaps should not have been selected at all. and others find their way to the casualty list. In both these respects the Maori team was unfortunate. It

was found that the inside backs taken away with the team were not nearly up to standard. The weakness of the halves reduced the team’s strength to little more than mediocre provincial standard in its opening matches, and Bell was found to be the only reliable five-eghth. SUCCESS AND FAILURE Kingi, though he at times revealed flashes of brilliance, proved to be desperately unreliable, and Shortland, lacking experience, was further handicapped by injuries. In actual fact the team was without the most brilliant of the Maori contemporary backs, and the absence of Nepia, Paewai, Mill and Blake deprived it of much of the strength a fully representative team would have carried. Fortunately some of the old hands were tried and true. Bell was solid, and made a firm foundation for the inside backs. Barclay played either first five-eighth or rover, instead of on the wing, and Robinson, the hefty youth from Banks Peninsula, eventually found his way to the forwards, where he made his mark. In Falwasser the team possessed a winger of outstanding ability. He was the cardinal success of the tour, and his elusiveness amazed England. Grace, the Te Aute boy, was not a startling success. His slender lines did not fit him to stand the rigours of strenuous matches. On the other hand Robinson, Wilson and Pelham were players who made good. Wilson is considered a certainty for the Hawke’s Bay rep. team this season. One player, McDonald, played only half a game. THE LIFE OF THE PARTY On the social side the Maoris were a distinct success, and their deportment was in striking contrast to that of the rebellious seven LeagLie players in England at the same time. The presence in the Maori team of several talented musicians and vocalists allowed them to put on excellent entertainments, and wherever they travelled they were the life of their immediate travelling associates. Their string band took the place of the portable gramophone with which the All Blacks enlivened their journeys. In everything, in the different conditions under which the team toured and in the different type of football it played, the latest Maori team presents a contrast to the first one, which left New Zealand in 1888. That tour was sponsored by private enterprise, and to help make it a success it was agreed that Australian Rules football should be played, as well as arthodox Rugby. To this end a trainer familiar with the Australian game was engaged, but the expense involved proved to be practically a waste of money. The games played in Australia were all played under Rugby Union rules, and one; of them was the occasion of a mild sensation when, on the way back to New Zealand, four members of the team playing a match in Queensland were disqualified for “running dead.” AMATEUR STOKERS During that ISBB-89 Maori tour many of the players did not play in boots. On the way to England they kept themselves fit by stoking the ship’s furnaces, and when their ship grounded in the Suez Canal they dropped over the side and played the first Rugby game ever staged in ancient Egypt. It was all rather different from 192 C when the Maoris who returned to New Zealand were dignified young men, immaculate in double-breasted coats, and serene in the assurance which was formerly the sole prerogative of the pakeha traveller.