Declares Chinese Play Rugby Well

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 345, 4 May 1928, Page 10

Declares Chinese Play Rugby Well

New Zealand M.P. Speaks Well of Orientals’ Abilities Some of the facts in the following interview with the Hon. T. M. Wilford which appeared in the “Vancouver Province,” will no doubt amuse New Zealanders: HHHE Chinese are remarkable football players, declared the Hon. T. M. Wilford, for twenty-nine years a member of the House of Parliament in New Zealand and former Minister of Justice of that Commonwealth, speaking of the way in which the Orientals have adopted the sports of the Western races. He spoke more particularly of Rugby, in which game the New Zealanders have had many a hot tilt with picked teams from China. Mr. Wilford is an ardent enthusiast of all sports and especially cricket. In this latter game he thinks the Australians are leaders of the Southern Pacific countries, but in Rugby he holds that the New Zealanders are supreme, being, he declares, renowned the world round for speed and technique. “Why the Chinese are so devoted to Rugby is difficult to explain fully. But these men and boys who challenge the outside worl4 at Rugby operate at a decided disadvantage,” Mr. Wilford declared. He said that the dialects of China are so varied and numerous that much of the time fellow Chinese could not carry on a discussion of the game in their native tongues, everyone else, he told his intqyviewer. To say that the Hon. T. M. Wilford said all that appears in this interview seems hard to believe and one feels certain that it is just an example of the characteristic “reliability” of the papers on that side.