FROM THE SCRAP BOOK

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 47, 25 February 1939, Page 4

FROM THE SCRAP BOOK

JOTTINGS OF INTEREST FROM HERE AND THERE

Locke Says Winner Take AH. An English sporting writer declares that Bobby Locke, the South African golfer, will stipulate that tfie proposed £5OO a-side match with Henry Cotton shall be played on a winner-take-all basis —and the gatemoney should be large. Locke, when he toured Australia recently, showed not the slightest trace of insanity, says the Sydney Referee.

£II,SOO Player Dropped. Highest-priced Soccer footballer In Great Britain, Byrn Jones, for whom Arsenal paid Wolverhampton Wanderers £14,500 early in the season, has been relegated to Arsenal’s reserve team. Jones has been right out of form recently, and it is hoped by Arsenal’s management that play in the n-suvt team will restore his confidence. The position formerly filled by Jones in Wolverhampton’s team is now occupied by a twenty-year-old Canadian. Douglas M’Mahon, who cost Wolverhampton only his fare from Winnipeg, there being no international transfer fees.

Wimbledon Without Australians. Commenting on the decision of the Australians to give Wimbledon a miss this year, London Daily Mail writer, Geoffrey Simpson, says: “Think of all the great players who will not be there! Budge, von Cramm, Perry, Vines . . and now those star Australian performers, Adrian Quist and John Bromwich, are leaving us out. “Bromwich, the man who changes his racquet from hand to hand and turns every shot into a forehand stroke, is generally voted the best amateur in the world now that. Budge has joined the money players. “Wimbledon is going to be poorer without him; in fact, the men stars are dwindling so rapidly that the meeting is due for a lean year if the girls do not. hold the interest."

English Scouts Among Welsh Soccer Teams. Touching on the selection of a firstclass soccer team to play for Wales in the amateur internationals, Mr. Ted Robins secretary of the Welsh F.A.. says;—"Our trouble is that Wales is over-run with football scouts. They are on the spot all the time, and any amateur of promise is whisked away to England and turned into a professional almost as soon as we have decided to consider him for a place in the national team." He does not blame young fellows for turning to football for a living, “The alt°rnative for so many is work underground as a collier for small wages . . . and then they think of football at £8 a week in keen, clean air." But he does wish some English League clubs would be more polite. The morning after Wales’ last trial match he picked up his newspaper and read that three of the players in it hjjd been signed overnight as profession-

Three Ducks and Each First Ball. A. Baillie, who bats for North Sydney in the first-grade, has had three innings for three “ducks,” each first ball. Rough luck that. But in cricket there is always a change in luck. And when it comes it is generally generous. This reminds us of a celebrated Yorkshireman. His name was Bobbie Peel, a star Test bowler of England in the ’eighties and early ’nineties. Peel batted left hand. He ran into Charles Turner on a sticky wicket at the Sydney Ground in 1894-5. The wicketkeeper was big Affie Jarvis, of Adelaide. First innings Turner pitched the ball up enticingly, Peel played forward, it broke away, and he was out of his ground—Jarvis, an artist had the bails off in a flash. Came the second innings. Precisely similar conditions and a precisely similar experience. He secured the “pair” stumped first' ball each innings by Jarvis off Turner. Fate smile \ however, when Bobbie played a very sound game f6r 70 odd in the final Tpst in Melbourne.