SPORTS IN FRANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1939, Page 6

SPORTS IN FRANCE

BRITISH TROOPS MEET DOUGHTY OPPONENTS. One can imagine the feelings of the British soldiers who mot a French team a few days ago at Soccer, says the “Daily Telegraph." To take the field, as no doubt our soldiers did. with the quiet modesty of men assured of victory, and then to lose the match by 10 goals to one —this must indeed have been a test of traditional sangfroid. Had it happened in the last war the result would have staggered the losers even more. The idea of French skill at games was still a little startling. Yet a handsome young man called Carpentier had already defeated a succession of British champions. After the war the genius of Borotra. Lacoste and Cochct. and the superb Lenglen, dominated the world of lawn tennis. It is not without significance, perhaps, that the favourites of a public which once adored wavy-haired “jetines premiers are now Gary Cooper, who is strong and silent, and their own Jean Gabin. who looks even stronger and hardly speaks at all. The finicky French exquisite of English farce is dead. His end is less surprising than that, in the land of Cyrano, spitting his oppenent on the last line of a ballade, and D'Artagnan. routing companies singlehanded. he should ever have lived at all.