FOOTBALL NOTES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10060, 6 August 1910, Page 3

FOOTBALL NOTES.

(Half-back.) The Red Star junmra will rlay Masterton juniors in the first challenge for the Pearson Cup. The crowd of 45,000 at the Eng-lanri-Austrshsia match in Sydney on July 9th is a record for the 13aside game in any part of the world. Sydney's record for any game of footoall is 52,000 at a New Zealand New South Wales Rugby match, while that of England is about twice as lar*e again. The defeat of the British team by tV. Transvaal to the, tune of 27 points to 8 must be a highly-disap- j pointing result to English sportsmen.. Defeat in itself is not of any great importance, but such a reverse implies a rout. The first test match is to te played at Johannesburg to-day The Ponsonby Club is having a very checquered career this season The senior team was drawn on by the New Zealand Union and the New Zealand Maori teams for the Australian tours, seven members thus being lost to the club for some weeks The team was further depleted by disqualification, and the officials have, therefore, had great difficulty each week in placing a team in the field. It woulJ have been obviously unfair to have withdrawn junior players from their teams and played them senior for some weeks, and thus deprived them of further play when the tourists returned. A Sydney cable, dated July 28th, states that the Metropolitan R.U. Committee decided to recommend Ihe adoption of a definitinn which makes for out-and-out amateurism, and according to which a Kugby Union player will have to be an amateur in all departments of sport. A rather unusual rumour is in circulation concerning the alleged payment for lo?s of time of certain members of the New Zealand team recently in Australia, says a writer in the Otago Witness. As a rule, I do not give credence to irresponsible statements of this nature, but the seriousness of the allegation demands an inquiry by the Otago Rugby Union. There may be nothing in it, in which case those responsible for the circulation of the story are doing in calculable harm not only to the members o" the New Zealand team in par ticulav, but to the gams generally throughout the Dominion. A Dunedin comment: "The Maori ; backs were like thoroughbreds in a hack race. Not ouly were the natives man for man yards faster than the whites but in Rugby intelligence and ability tliey outrivalled the Otago rearguard in every department of the game. Otago has not had her mediocrky shown up in such splendid and daring fashion for years." "The finest exhibition of football I have seen since leaving England.," remarked an old Blackheatb player to a Dunedin writer after the Maori-Otago match. One game like that will do more good to the Rugby code than a 1 the sermons in Northern Union football ever preached.

Tne New Zealand Rugby Union has \ not managed to fix a date as yet for i the inter-island match, the latest pronouncement being that it will be played about the end of August. The location of the match is also in the clouds at the present time. "Jimmy" Duncan was made much o± by the visiting Americana, who voted the veteran a good referee and a capital fellow. Captain Cref said the une name which he had heard when in America in connec- j tion with football in New Zealand was that of "Jimmy" Duncan, while coach Schaeffer declared that he had heard of the fame of Duncan long before he set out on his tour. Four days' sea-sickness decided the American coach to return to Sydney from Wellington last season without seeing Duncan, otherwise Duncan of Dunedin, and not Howe of New South Wales, might have been invited to California to coach the Universities.