Hawke’s Bay Lacks Leading Lights

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 132, 25 August 1927, Page 7

Hawke’s Bay Lacks Leading Lights

PACK A SHADOW SATURDAY’S RUGBY MATCH LACKING seven or eight of its star players, the Hawke’s Bay team now on tour is only a shadow of the team that held the Ranfurly Shield up to this year. Unless reinforcements are sent from Napier, Auckland will perhaps see another one-sided match on Saturday. The players not available when the team left on Tuesday were the two Brownlies, Swain, G. Yates, Strachan, S. Gemmel, Conrad and J. Blake, without whom the touring side looks very ordinary. SAVING THEMSELVES There are indications that some of the Bay’s star players are saving themselves for next month’s trial matches, but there is hope for Saturday in the promise that some of them would come north for the Auckland game. Auckland does not want to continue its winning career at the expense of weakened sides, and would prefer to test its strength against Hawke’s Bay’s best. Even in its palmiest days the Bay was never able to beat Auckland on an Auckland ground. Of the Bay team which left Napier on Tuesday, only four of the forwards are players of repute in big football. The “big four” are Single, Tankard, Campbell and Wilson, a great quar-

tette. Wilson was with the Maori team. Of the others, Heffernan is an exAuckland junior rep.—hardly a brainy forward. J. Gemmel is a bustling forward, while Rolls lacks weight. R. Steer has only just left Napier High School, and he and Simon are the colts of the team. BACKS ALSO WEAKENED Without Blake and Yates the backs, also, are weakened, but not to the same extent. Barclay, Grenside and Cor kill are fine performers, and Huxtable is a young but promising winger, who made a sensational bow to big Rugby in the second Wairarapa match on July 9. W. Edwards and E. Te Ngaio are Maori backs, both sturdy custodians, and either Edwards or Anstis, who si light, will be behind the scrum. Seal is best remembered because of the poor game he played on June 3, when Wairarapa beat Hawke’s Bay, largely because Cooke, directing his kicks with uncanny accuracy, discovered that the Bay fullback was fatally weak. The team will reach Auckland tomorrow morning, in charge of Mr. A. Kirkpatrick, who was a hooker with the 1925 All Blacks. A referee for the big match will be selected to-mor-row, when it will be decided also whether the ground will stand a cur-tain-raiser.