SPORTS & PASTIMES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 April 1938, Page 4

SPORTS & PASTIMES

ITEMS FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. Rugby Union continues to progress in Queensland. This season’s affiliations for the Brisbane premierships are a record. There will be more teams at Warwick, and the game has been introduced to Maryborough, a strong League centre not so many years ago. The New Zealand Rugby team whcih is to tour Australia this season will leave Wellington on the Wanganella on July 7, arriving in Sydney on July 11. It is to leave Sydney for New Zealand on the return trip on August 15. Pierre De Villiers, the diminutive South African scrum-half, who, in spite of a frail frame, rose to the very highest rung of the international Rugby ladder, has definitely retired. “The game has been kind to me,” he said. ‘lt has given me entertainment and fellowship and tours, but the time has arirved for jme to get out. I have been lucky with regard to injuries, but on this last tour of New Zealand my knee started to go, and I do not feel that the risk of further injury is justifiable.”

The Australian cricket captain, p. G. Bradman, has made a century in every test match in which he has played against England on the Melbourne ground. Bradman has played in five tests on that ground—l92B-9: Third test, 112 in the second innings; fifth, 123 in the first innings. 1932-3: Second test, 103 not out in the second innings. 19367: Third test. 270 in the second innings; fifth test, 167 in the first innings.

At Miami, Florida, United States, recently, Fred Perry struck a little trouble and inconvenience. He was nearly left behind when he arrived at the airport with Ellsworth Vines and others en route for Nassau, Bahamas. All because of an argument with a United States revenue officer. Aliens leaving the United States must have paid income tax due or have posted a bond equal to the previous year’s payment, and Perry is alleged to have refused to comply with these regulations. Eventually, when Perry threatened to board the machine the airline officials said that they would be forced to reVines solved the problem by guaranfuse his passage. Then Ellsworth teeing Perry’s return to the United States and also his income tax.

“Thirteen is supposed to be an unlucky number. Wfiat about' 19? asks an Australian writer. Sydney Grammar School some years ago lost the athletic championship of New South Wales after holding it 19 years. Very soon afterwards Melbourne Grammar School won its first Head of the River boat race for •19 years, and now the Melbourne Harriers have won the amateur athletic premiership of Victoria after a lapse of 19 years. It is extraordinary how some numbers attach themselves to certain people or things. It will be remembered how often W. H. Ponsford made 110 in Sheffield and test matches —he made that score twice in one game—and how frequently one of the numbers in the nineties have intervened to stop a century.