LEAVING THE FIELD AT HALF-TIME

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 985, 30 May 1930, Page 9

LEAVING THE FIELD AT HALF-TIME

IT is not a rule of the English Rugby Union—the Kugby Union, * as one is reminded—that teams shall not' leave the field at halftime; but it has been an English practice and is a recommendation of the International Rugby Board which the touring British team, so its manager announced at New Plymouth, will now adopt. Mr. Baxter’s decision may mean that all teams playing against the visitors must also stay on the field for the whole period of the game. Whether or not the New Zealand Rugby Union agrees to this, players and ex-players up and down the country will oppose it.

The International Rugby Board—to quote from the circular letter to players and referees in which this so-called rule is contained, “can see no reason for the practice of retiring to the pavilion.” Therefore it recommends that no player shall leave the ground at half-time without the permission of the referee, adding that permission should be restricted. British players, on the other hand, seem to be in sympathy with the New Zealand practice of retiring to shelter at half-time, the increase of which at Home —in some eases to the length of almost all players leaving the field—spurred the International Board to its action. Small wonder that they are, because English and Scottish winters can be far more bitter than ours, and lliere is no part of New Zealand in which, on some days, a heated footballer does not needlessly imperil his health by hanging about in icy, pelting rain, or in a piercing southerly, waiting’ for the second half’s play to begin. If players may not leave the field at half-time, there will be no sense, often, in having half-time: better to change ends immediately and play straight on.