Satisfactorily Settled

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 992, 7 June 1930, Page 15

Satisfactorily Settled

ENGLISH LEAGUE TROUBLE New Zealanders and St. Helens MORE complete details of the threatened break between the St. Helens League Club in England and the three New Zealanders, Hall, Hutt and Hardgrave, are now coming to hand. Fortunately for all concerned, the points at issue were amicably settled, and the three Aucklanders signed a five years’ contract at what were presumably satisfactory terms. The following extracts from St. Helens papers shed an interesting light on the affair.

The St. Helens “Reporter” of March 25 says: The New Zealanders, on Sunday, had dropped a bombshell into the camp by presenting a letter to the club which amounted practically to an ultimatum. Their demands were for a guarantee of £ 3 10s a week, summer and winter, for 52 weeks, in addition to their present playing wages, and they further asked for the guarantee of the payment down of £250 on completion of seven years’ service. The committee said they refused to be bludgeoned in the matter, and picked the team for Saturday, leaving out the three colonials. After the meeting, it was stated that with working allowances and bonuses the New Zealanders were making as much as £l2 and £l4 a match in many of the matches, and the committee refused to give in while a pistol was pointed at their heads. EXPLANATION FROM THE NEW ZEALANDERS In a later interview with the Press the three New Zealanders threw fresh light on their demands. “We can go back and play for New Zealand tourists in their forthcoming tour of Australia,” said Hardgrave. “We should be just be as well off as we are in St. Helens, better, in fact. The committee did not give us the jobs that they had guaranteed to give us. A labourer’s job is very different from a motor driver’s job.” Trevor Hall said they were not complaining so much about the signingon fee as the work that had been guaranteed to them. They were not found the proper jobs. They were not labourers, but if they did not go labouring and through any cause whatever became unable to play football they were stranded. He said they approached the committee in quite a constitutional and polite way some time ago, asking if that body would guarantee their passages home-if called upon. The committee refused. They then asked them to find the jobs they had guaranteed, but instead of giving them jobs as lorry drivers, they were given labouring work. They asked for a proper signing-on fee, commensurate with tlieir international rank, and the committee fobbed them off with a .promise that they would consider the recommending of a benefit match to be shared among the three of them. A LONG WAIT “They expected us,” declared Hall indignantly, “to serve seven long years for that, and even then they could not guarantee it, because they said they could not bind any future committee to ratify their decision.” Hutt, who was injured earlier in the season, said that when he was ill he realised that he could neither work nor play, and he felt the position. He had no retaining fee, no guarantee of a passage back, no signing-on fee to speak of, really, he would be better off in New Zealand. It was true, he said, that the committee gave him £B, but

this was only a drop in th© ocean. They wanted their position defining clearly and they wanted more security —otherwise they intended booking tlieir passages back to New Zealand on the Corintliic, which sailed on April “IMPOSSIBLE PROPOSALS” ATr. Fred Jones, the vice-chairman, said: “In my opinion the players put a financial proposal before us that it was impossible to face. We tried very hard to get the men to leave it over for a week, because we were looking forward to the united team putting up a wonderful performance against Wigan. But w© are unanimous in our decision that the request of the players could not possibly be agreed to, and we shall carry on with the men we have got, and I believe we shall win.”

Air. Jones went on to deal with the complaint made by the New Zealanders that they were paid less to come from New Zealand to sign for St. Helens than the average junior league player received for sining on to qualify in an “A” team.

“Hutt and Hall,” he said, “only received £SO each, while Hardgrave received £IOO, but those expenses alone do not cover the matter. We paid knew he had a wife. That accounts the £IOO to Hardgrave because we for th© difference in the fees. When we were conducting the negotiations with Hutt and Hall by cable we had not the slightest idea they were married. Immediately, they let us know, we cabled back for them to bring their wives with them. We paid six passages from New Zealand at £76 each. Shortly after'the men had settled down at Knowsley Road they told us they had incurred rather large out-of-poc-ket expenses on the voyage to England. We told them to make their expenses sheets out and we would foot the bill. They did so, and w© paid them a substantial sum. We met them like men, and did everything we could to make them comfortable. We certainly have no prickings of conscience over the whole affair. “We found work for them —the best work we could —and did everything to make them comfortable, increasing their playing wages to supplement their wages at work. I am sorry our spectators have been let down, for we have one of the best followings in the Rugby League.”