OTAHUHU CLUB’S SPORTING SPIRIT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 140, 3 September 1927, Page 7

OTAHUHU CLUB’S SPORTING SPIRIT

COMMENDABLE POLICY OF ASSISTING OTHER BODIES AND CHARITY THE Otahuhu Trotting Club is evidently out to foster healthy recreation, and apart from advancing the interests of the light-har-ness sport, encourages football and cricket. The club also assists any charitable object, and is a real sporting body in the true sense of the word. There are probably not many racing bodies in the Dominion that view the progress of other pastimes with the same degree of interest as the Otahuhu Trotting Club. It has played, and is playing, the role of the big brother to these smaller organisations, and in this shows a commendable spirit. LABOUR OF LOVE “We consider it our duty,” said president Mackenzie, at the recent meeting the club, ”to always assist any sport for the benefit of clubs which are not in as good a financial position as ourselves.” Football clubs and other sporting organisations have for some years had access to the Mangere property for the purpose of carrying on their various games. This is an innovation

that benefits all those connected with such pastimes as are played on the club’s grounds, and certainly encourages the promotion of sport in the Otahuhu area. And these grounds are available to clubs and players free of cost, and as a result this helpful recreation has made good progress in that locality. ASSISTING CRICKET To encourage the popular summer game the Otahuhu light-harness body has guaranteed the sum of £25 per annum toward the maintenance of a cricket coach for Auckland. As a further proof of its interest in sport generally, and cricket in particular, this real live organisation took up 50 £1 shares in the fund raised to send the New Zealand cricket team to England. POPULARISING TROTTING To further popularise the sport of trotting, and at the same time assist the Royal Show, this liberal-handed organisation last year donated 100 sovereigns for a special race to be included in the association’s recreative catalogue. Light-harness exhibitions in connection with agricultural and pastoral shows are becoming popular throughout the Dominion, and their inclusion on show schedules are proving highly satisfactory and successful from every point of view. People who appear unable to dissociate the thrilling sport from the gambling spirit, and thereby absent themselves from trotting fixtures, see the pacers and trotters in action at show functions, and we find the exhibitions exhilarating and infectious. Many by this means become converts to the sport and follow it with enthusiasm. HELPING CHARITY The Otahuhu Club and its members are also charitably inclined, and any appeal for a worthy cause is not made in vain. Last year the sum of £256 7s was allocated to charitable and other worthy objects. At the annual meeting the president mentioned that the Mayoress of Onehunga, Mrs. Coldicutt, was raising funds in connection with a hospital auxiliary project. The club gave £5, and the hat passed round the room resulted in a collection of £l3. This is the spirit then that is prompting the Otahuhu Trotting Club and it is to be warmly commended on its real sporting spirit. TROTTING FIXTURES September 17.—Wellington T.C. October 15.—Inangahua T.C. October 15-19.—Auckland T.C. October 22-24.—Greymouth T.C. November 8-10-11. —N.Z. Metropolitan T.C. November 19-23.—Otahuhu T.C. NOMINATIONS Aug. 26—Wellington Trotting Club October 7 —Greymouth Trotting Club ACCEPTANCES September 7—Wellington Trotting Club October IS—Greymouth Trotting Club