“More Fighting Than Football

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1003, 20 June 1930, Page 9

“More Fighting Than Football

RUGBY IN FRANCE IS GAME DOOMED ? Kugby football, as played by th« French, is declared to have become, so violent that it is ••doomed.'’ The death, recently, of a SYencn player has led to a storm of protect at tho brutality and violence of Frencn Rugbv football. A tragic climax to the succession of rough incidents occurred when Michel Pradie. who was badly hu* ■ in a match at Bordeaux, died in hospital. Fradie died in his mother s arms fully conscious. . . - A record crowd had watched th match, Avhich was a semi-final in the National Championship between Agen and Pau REFEREE KICKED The referee, describing the closins

stages of the play, said lie caught one of the players, whom he had alread' sent off the field and brought back, trying to strangle an Agen player. He asked the player to leave th® field again, but he refused and abused him. Then another player came up to the referee and violently kicked him in the thigh. The referee seized by the jersey and led him off the field. Prailie’s mother had made him promise that morning that this would be his last match. “They will kill you if you go on playing/* she said. . . M. Franz-Reichel, president of the National Sports Committee, writes of the other semi-final played In Pari* as leaving a “lamentable impression 1 He declares that Rugby should be regarded as an intelligent sport ami not a victory for “size, strength and furious violence.” „ “They do not play, they ngn L , he concludes. Thirteen of the 13 players in the Quillan team were hurt in their match against Carcassonne on Sunday (says the Exchange). Several could only wait with aid of sticks the other morning and some are still unable to leave their beds. The general feeling is that unless prompt and effective steps are taken Rugby in France is doomed. The last international match of the j season, between France and Wales a j Colombes. on Easter Monday, was i described by Percy Rudd, the specia! • correspondent of the “Daily Chronicle, ! as the foulest match he ever saw. The game was constantly held up • owing to injuries to players, and there i was more fighting than football. Mr. Rudd picked out A. Bioussa, one of the French forwards, as the player who began the trouble, and it is sig- ; nificant that only the other week the French Rugby Federation announced j that, in consequence of his conduct in • this match, Bioussa would never again be chosen to represent France.