OTAGOS "INVASION" OF SOUTHLAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 4, 21 July 1939, Page 49

OTAGOS "INVASION" OF SOUTHLAND

HE Invercargill Station, 4YZ, usually manages to hit the topical nail on the head with a selection of sports items each week. The programme announced in this issue is as good as ever, with the South-land-Otago Ranfurly Shield Rugby match heading the list. The relay will come from A. B. Binnie at Rugby Park on Saturday, July 29, commencing at 2.45 p.m. It will be picked up by 4YA. If excitement ever does reach journalistic fever-pitch it reaches it on the day of this match down South. When the match is at Carisbrook all Southland flocks to Dunedin; and Invercargill is down to the plimsoll line with the weight of visitors if it is at Rugby Park. Dozens of special trains are used to drain the rest of the province of its Rugby population, each one with its pipe band, its jester, its thousands of pies, sandwiches, cakes and ale, and arguments. They are proud of these "Invasions" as they call them down there. One city resigns itself to mass evacuation while the other eagerly anticipates the arrival of hundreds and thousands of prospective purchasers of things to eat, drink, sit on, stand on. Has anyone ever worked out the economics of this exodus and influx? If only 3,000 people leave Dunedin for Invercargill on Saturday there will be 3,000 fewer morning teas, lunches, afternoon teas, and dinners to serve. Dunedin will miss the consumption of more than 200 gallons of tea, one or two hundred pounds of sugar, about 10 hogsheads of beer (unless they take it with them), enough milk, butter, and cheese to keep two or three dairy farms busy for two milkings, with meat, vegetables, fruit and cereals in the same proportion. Those who are left will make some difference to the power supply when they switch on their radios at half past two. Invercargill will be called on to supply what Dunedin would have eaten if it had stayed at home. Every refreshment room along the railway lines, every hotel and cafe along the roads, every service station, every dining-room in the city itself, will find its

figures doubling up. Trainmen, busmen, tramwaymen, taxi drivers, all through the province will be finding the day different from all ordinary: days. How many hundreds of changes must be made in how many other similar details? What, for example, will they do in that drv city with all the beer bottles left behind? Surely that will be an unusual problem for Invercargill? Or have the Invercargill small boys become as busy, as bold, as tough and hard bitten, and as avaricious, as the small boys who almost snatch the bottles away before they are finished at Eden Park in Auckland. So, next Saturday, nearly everything in that hospitable end of New Zealand will be trampled’ and tumbled about by the Moloch Sport. Sport and Money Sport is one of the biggest industries in our time. Motor car racing probably costs more and returns less than anything else except running a rickety horse. Bentley Motors had to go into liquidation in 1931 after a long period of keeping England ahead of anyone else on the circuits of Europe. Statesubsidised Continental teams were in front until Humphrey Cook, millionaire, and himself a driver, started the E.R.A. stable to make racing history in the Bentley fashion. He now proposes shutting down after spending £15,000 a year and getting nothing but first places for it. Several leading drivers are trying to build up a fund to maintain the cars. Most professional sports are profitable, however. In nearly every competitive sport invented there are promoters in for their income out of the public’s entertainment money. Not long ago Windsor Lad, 1934 Derby winner, was operated on for a brain tumour. Veterinary services cost a minimum of £1,000 per week. The horse cost its owners £50,000. At the time of the operation he was insured for £45,000. Yet Windsor Lad was a profitable investment. Mick the Miller, a greyhound, cost an Irish Priest £25, was sold for £1,000, won £9,000 in prize money, earned £3,000 in stud fees. He died this year leaving the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons to aii 3 over his heart and brain. Reference for the Week Cricket: Luckily, for the direct broadcasts will be hard to.catch with ordinary ‘sets, ‘the "YA ‘stations will .re-broadcast Daventry for .the eee acon Sunday, from 9.15 a.m. our time.

In addition, 2YA will broadcast a summary of scores at 10 a.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday. Horses: The Christchurch Hunt Club’s meeting at Riccarton will be broadcast by 3YA from 12 noon on Saturday. Matmen: Wrestling relays will come from 1YA and 2YA at 9.5 p.m. on Monday. In the Ring: Relays of boxing matches from 4YZ on Saturday at 9 p.m. and 2YC on Thursday, at 9.5. p.m. Ranfurly Shield: Otago will meet Southland at Invercargill on Saturday, and the broadcast, relayed from 4YZ to 4YA will begin at 2.45 p.m. On Monday H. S. Strang will talk about the match from 4YZ at 8 p.m. In a representative match Ashburton will meet Wellington at Athletic Park on Wednesday, and 2YC will commence the broadcast at 2.45 p.m. Club Rugby: The times for relays of Saturday club Rugby in the various centres will be found on our Look Before You Listen page. Talks: The inquest on Rugby will be continued as follows: In Gordon Hutter’s session from 1YA on Friday, at 7.30 p.m., George Aitken will tell if Rugby is Deteriorating. Teddy Roberts will be heard from 2YA on Friday, at 7.40 p.m.; Mark Nicholls from 3YA at 9.5 p.m. on Monday, and from 4YA at 8.47_p.m. on Tuesday. The referee’s point of view will be given by Albert de Clifton from 2YD on Wednesday at 8 p.m. "'Takaro" will talk about Recreation at Home and Abroad from 2YC on Tuesday at 3.15 p.m. J. D. K. Taylor, Chairman of the Fiji Rugby Union, will be heard from the 4YZ Sports Club on Thursday at 6.15 p.m. Marginal Notes They are waist deep in fan mail in the 2YD studios since the broadcast of the Hawke’s Bay Rugby feature. Extract from a trespass notice seen in the North Island: "Trampers, Campers, and Other Idle Persons, Warning. . . One of the main ingredients of the mixture for so-called " mud-wrestling " is used engine oil. The U.S.A. has returned to normal. University graduates have organised a society for the prevention of goldfish eating, with its allied evils of worm eating, snake eating, pollywog eating, and magazine eating. Donald Budge is well established as number one of the tennis professionals. Of 36 matches played ’ Ym a recent U.S.A. tour with Fred Perry, Budge -. won 28. In May last, at Wembley, in the profes- _ sional tournament, Budge beat Vines, Nusslein, and Tilden, in turn.