SOME QUEER INCIDENTS IN SPORT.

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 815, 8 November 1929, Page 7

SOME QUEER INCIDENTS IN SPORT.

In most unexpected places, and at most unexpected times, one runs across some extraordinary incidents in sport. A footballer got a nasty knock on the head in an inter-provincial match. He went on playing, but seemed rather queer to his mates. Anyhow, he scored a. clinking try, and his side came off a winner. But it was half an hour later before he recovered his senses. He remembered nothing after his injury, not even the try he scored! One of the gamest men I ever saw was a big raw-boned axemen, who, competing in stockinged feet, struck his log a glancing blow with his axe, and practically lopped a toe off. With the blood streaming from his foot, he went on and won. Then he asked for a cigarette, and allowed the local doctor, who was on the sports committee, to fix his foot up. * * * I once saw an international Rugby threequarter in Dunedin get his shorts torn off in the course of a sensational run down the line. He hesitated a fraction, saw the goal-line ahead, and went on at top with the wind whistling between his hairy legs. He scored the try, and then sat down suddenly. The crowd roared.

Another time I saw a world’s champion cyclist take violently ill before a big race in Auckland. He came out, and won handsomely.

The biggest eater among athletes I have seen was a little Maori footballer, who went to Australia with one of Ned Parata’s teams some years back. He would have dinner with the rest of the team—and a good solid footballer’s dinner it was, too—and then go round the town and have dinner at two or three other places as well. One night, at Barrett’s Hotel, Wellington, he managed to get through the same menu three times in one night. He was not a rough, coarse fellow. On the contrary, he played the piano beautifully, and sang like an angel.

i Somebody once told me that, before a big Rugby match, when bn tour, George Smith used to go to bed and stay there till it was time for the brake to take them to the ground. That was bringing relaxation to a fine art. I was reminded of that story onca® when I went to see Jackson Scholz at the Central Hotel, Auckland, when he and Lloyd Hahn were in New Zealand a few years back. To my astonishment, he was in bed. The same afternoon he came out and ran 220yds in 21 2-ssec—an Australasian record.

I have played cricket a fair bit, but remember only one unusual incident. A player was leaning back to make a catch, and was half-blinded by the sun. 'He put up his hands to shield his face. The ball struck his bare chest, and lodged in his flannel shirt, which was wide open. He pulled it out and claimed, a catch, which the umpire "omptly awarded.

At a sports meeting not a hundred miles from Auckland, the judges placed a man first who never started in the race. What’s more, they refused to alter their placings. Years ago, when the cycling boom

At a recent meeting of the Wellington Centre of the N.Z.A.A.A., Mr. L-. A. Tracy was appointed handicapper in place of Mr. Poutarewa, who was unable to accept office* for private reasons.

was on. two competitors put their heads together to “take down the books.” The scheme was that A, a hot favourite, was to make the pace and take B out for the final sprint, B to win. But A was travelling so fast at the finish that he couldn't pull up in time, and to his intense disgust, he beat B by half a length, amid prolonged cheering from the gentlemen who lay the odds.

If ever there was a trier, it was X . He was hopeless as a runner, but he competed at all the meetings, and he was a prime favourite with the boys. At the last meeting of the Christmas circuit, the crowd put their heads together and decided to “set” the last race of the day, the Consolation Handicap, for N . But he was so slow that half the field nearly fell ovpr themselves trying to let him win. N won all right, but the race was so obviously a “ready” that the heads put the whole field up, apd threatened to disqualify the lot. There was only one thing for it, and that was to tell the .truth. The committee took a sporting view of it, administered a severe caution, and ordered the race to be rerun. N didn’t win this time, but later on in the season, the handicapper, who had been a good runner himself in his da3 r , saw to it that X got a mark which enabled him to romp home a winner for the first (and probably only) time in his career.

A brilliant young athlete got into some trouble or other, and was sentenced to a term in a Borstal Institution. The Xew • Zealand championships were coming off a week after he was due to be released, and he badly wanted to redeem himself in his own way. The was how to train. He went to the superintendent, who was very keen on the value of sport in building character, and got permission to train in the institution’s playground while the other inmates were playing soccer. A week after his release, he won the New Zealand championship. I’m not saying who that chap was or

In future coxswains will not be allowed in championship pairs races in Xew Zealand, according to a decision arrived at this week at the annual meeting of the controlling authority of rowing, held in Wellington.

Xew Zealand rowing crews in the past have worn white jerseys with maroon facings, but the annual meeting of the Xew Zealand Amateur Rowing Association, held in Wellington on Tuesday eveming, decided that in future oarsmen selected to represent the Dominion shall wear black jerseys with a. silver fern thereon.

when and where it happened, but the facts given here are a true bill.

I have played against a one-legged cricketer, and a one-armed footballer. The latter was a representative Rugby forward before the war, but Hun shrapnel made a nasty mess of his arm, and it had to come off. However, lie couldn't give the game best, and he played right through one season after his return to Xew Zealand, in senior football. He was worth his place. His marvellous footwork made up for the loss of an arm.

A most extraordinary incident took place in a rowing race at Akaroa some years ago. It was rowed in a howling sou’-wester, and one by one, the seven boats were swamped. The last went under about half a dozen yards from the finishing line, but the crew made a desperate effort, and managed to struggle across and win the race with the water up to their waists.

The oldest athlete 1 ever saw was a queer old chap over 70, who once turned out in a Sheffield Handicap clad in tights and trunks a la Wirth’s Circus. He had a long beard, which floated quaintly in the breeze. The handicapper took no chances, and put the old-timer on 35yds. Said veteran galloped off like a Gloaming, and ran a decent fourth. —"Wayfarer."