“GAME OF SAVAGES”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 971, 14 May 1930, Page 9

“GAME OF SAVAGES”

LIVES GO CHEAPLY IN FRENCH RUGBY PAPER BLAMES ENGLAND PARIS, Monday. A remarkable denunciation of English sport which appears in the “Journal des Debats” is the outcome of a recent death in a Rugby match. The journal says that if this “game of savages” is banished from civilised countries, the death of the victim will not have been in vain. English fathers, clergymen and heads of institutions have, it says, protested for years against this socalled sport, which is merely brutality. The newspaper asks how, in view of the fact that English newspapers used to publish the Rugby death roll, the game was ever allowed in France. The article continues: “It is not. generally known in France that the so-called popular sports in England are no longer anything but spectacles, like the cinema and other commercial enterprises. The only unprofessional sports in England are foxhunting and yachting. Both football and cricket are played by professionals. all of whom gain enormous profits. ONLY PROFITS COUNT “It does not matter whether the players are killed or maimed, so long as there are big profits.” A young Frenchman named Pradie, after" promising his mother on May tl that it would be his last match, played in a Kugbv game at Bordeaux. The same night Pradie died in his mother’s arms from injuries to his spine received in the game. Another player in the match tried to strangle an opponent, and refused to obey the referee, whom he kicked heavily in the thigh. Thirteen players were seriously hurt and could not leave the field unaided. When Jean Gaiie heard of Prudie’s death he said he would never play Rugby again. The general feeling in Paris then was that, unless prompt and effective steps are taken Rugby in France is doomed. Ribere, the French Rugby captain, said many injuries were not due to accidents. Rugby was too brutal.