A REPLY TO “PERSEUS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 57, 30 May 1927, Page 10

A REPLY TO “PERSEUS”

“Fairplay” writes: T SEE your soccer critic has been busy lambasting the Auckland Rugby nion. “Perseus” seems to have got a nestful of bees in his bonnet—he is like a lot more of these one-eyed Soccer fans, who come out from England and think they can teach us what sort of football we should play. Rugby is New Zealand’s national game—not in “theory,” as “Perseus” alleges, but in actual fact. There are 6,000 Rugby players in Auckland city alone —let “Perseus” put that in his pipe and smoke it. As for what happened when the Chinese Soccer team was here, that is ancient history, and Mr. Varney is quite right in what he says about the Rugby authorities putting off their big games to help the Canadian Soccer tour along. I see that Wanganui gave the Soccer people a clear field there on Saturday, and I have no doubt the Auckland Rugby Union will do the same when the Canadians play here. As for Soccer being opposed in the schools, that is bunkum, like “Perseus’s” statement that “there are ten boys anxious to play Soccer for one who wants Union Rugby at the Takapuna Grammar School.” The real fact of the matter is that our New Zealand schoolboys are born and bred Rugby players from the cradle, and Soccer will never oust Rugby as New Zealand’s national game.