ENGLISH LEAGUE TOUR OF AUSTRALIA

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 50, 21 May 1927, Page 13

ENGLISH LEAGUE TOUR OF AUSTRALIA

STRAINED RELATIONS END The New South Wales and Queensland Rugby Leagues are in high feather, the English League having agreed to send a team to Australia next season (says a writer in the Sydney “Bulletin.’’) This action means the re-establishment of the entente cordiale, which began to be strained when the last English side came to Australia in 1924, “ and was weakened by some utterances of the tourists’ management in Maoriland, where New South Wales and Queensland players and officials were but faintly praised, while the Dominion League was cracked up as high as Mount Cook. Then, when the English executive coldly declined an Australian request to be asked across, and beckoned to the Maorilanders, the local bodies retired with a nasty feeling in the pit of the stomach. The Englishmen come on their own terms as regards rules; they will ignore amendments which have been in use here for some seasons. Their attitude is that Australian Leaguers should not have adopted the new rules till approved by the Northern Union, the founders of the code. The flaw in that argument is that the Northern Union “founders” didn’t get the approval of the Rugby Union when it set up the professional code by altering a few of the R.U. rules, notably those with regard to amateur sport.