THE ALL BLACKS.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 September 1921, Page 8

THE ALL BLACKS.

OLD-TIME . TRAINING METHODS REVERTED TO.

“You take it from me,” remarked tylr. M. Hogan as he paused in his work of massaging an All Black three-quarter, “that it’s no good swathing footballers in cottonwool and exercising them like a bunch of invalids at a health sanatorium. What the boys want is good, healthy exercise for healthy men, and that’s what we’re giving them.” With that, the big trainer again applied himself to his task, and a Dominion reporter, who was at Day’s Bay on Thursday, on a visit to the training quarters of the New Zealand team, turned to “Dorrie” Leslie, who has sole charge of the work of preparing the All Blacks for the third Test. The veteran trainer and old-time walking champion had ideas equally pronounced. “We have,.” he said, “scrapped all the new-fangled, fanciful methods of training. There are no electrical massage plants in this camp. I am using the same methods that I used to knock myself into shape a quarter of a century ago, and they can be summed up as ‘Real, good, sound preparation.’ “There is not a man among them who is not perfectly fit and sound, excepting Algar, whose ankle is still a trifle 1 weak; but it should be all right by Saturday.” “GOOD AS T&E 1904 PACK.” “The team that will meet the Spring‘boks on Saturday will be the best fifteen we have put in the field this Season. They all look like winners to me. Physically, the forwards are just as good as the 1904 pack, and they were good enough to beat anything in the world. If they don’t win on Saturday I will take my hat off to the Springboks for being real world-beaters.” Referring to the second Test, Mr. Leslie remarked that one hour's training in the morning, followed by four hours treading the asphalt of a city, wound up with a dance at night, was not going to j turn out fit men. He added that when he took the present squad in hand he ; found several of them muSele-bound and i suffering from septic sores and bad knees. None of them had been properly .trained. What training they had received was for invalids—not fiti men. If they had been given thorough and sensible training from the start the selectors would not have had to alter the team one iota in order to uphold the honor of New Zealand Rugbv.

Meanwhile the team is improving out of sight, and when their period of active training will cease, they should be ready to take the field well-nigh perfect in point of physical fitness and general training. All hands agree that Day’s Bay is the ideal situation for the purposes of the camp.