IN RETROSPECT: Summer Sport In NZ

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 76, 6 December 1940, Page 20

IN RETROSPECT: Summer Sport

In NZ

SUMMER SPORTS: No. 26 of the Centennial Pictorial Surveys. By J. G. McLean, illustrations by J. D. Pascoe. Department of Internal Affairs. RADIO commentator who handles sporting material said the other day that there’s not much to look forward to these days in the way of sporting events. The life of a commentator was hard, he thought. However, he would make the best of it by taking what came and, at all events, it was always possible to look back over the sport we had enjoyed already. Something of the same philosophy will be attractive to sportsmen who take the’ very little trouble required to purchase No. 26 of the Centennial Pictorial Surveys, published by the Department of’ Internal Affairs. When they prepare these Surveys, the editors summarise a vast amount of material. To reduce it further seems almost incongruous, but this summary review of a summary is intended to show why the Survey should take a place on the bookshelf beside Wisden and the Rugby Union’s year book. A Strange Story Cricket begins the strange story of’ summer sport in New. Zealand. And it is strange-because somehow New Zealanders never seem to become really good at any sport. Even now, in these days of more and more specialisation, more competition, more jealousy, more quarrelling and bitter rivalry-even now, with all these recommendations, New Zealand sportsmen, on the whole, play their games with the primary purpose of enjoying themselves. ‘" Summer Sports" records that, when George Parr brought an English cricket team to the South Island from Australia, in 1864, it played three matches against teams in Dunedin and Christchurch. It won two and drew one-‘a meritorious record considering that the opposition batted and fielded 22 men in each match." Since then our margin of success, or failure, in cricket has been considerably reduced. There have been star turns such as the centuries scored by Dempster and Page at Lord’s in 1932; but New Zealand cricket has never reached the stage where news of it vies on the posters with the visit of a Chamberlain to Munich, or when a special late edition about "England Defeated" is recognised by the English as having nothing to do with anything so comparatively unimportant (then) as international affairs. On a fine Saturday afternoon it is still possible to find teams taking the bails with them into the nearest pub, -and_it- is the. rule that cricketers here

should enjoy themselves with the game in preference to amusing the public with controversy about bodyline bowling. Athletics for Pleasure In athletics the same easy spirit of true sportsmanship is not _ possible. Athletics is a sport of individual competition if ever there was one. But here, too, even in the later years when Lovelock, Boot, and Matthews, with their World and Empire Games successes have been giving the sport a wonderful impetus, we still find that an athletic meeting, as such, is arranged mainly for pleasure, and seldom for the development of some idolised specialist. In the distance events we have come close to great success. But Lovelock had to go overseas before he could find the atmosphere necessary for bringing out that last ounce. In sprints we have not yet outdone Hampton, whose name is given honourable place in the Survey for his breaking of evens in 1892. Chopping and Sawing Although the Survey treats them separately, and regrettably seems to regard them as a monopoly of the North Island, sports meetings at which such ancient games as chopping and sawing are popular, are almost in a majority in the Dominion. The metropolitan meeting, with its recently developed ideas about parade and ceremony, misses entirely the spirit of the country meeting. At

dozens of them annually, the most promising physical specimen of the nation, living in the best possible environment for fitness, run in their five or six races during the day, and finish the sprint or the mile in time to change from running shoes to the axeman’s grips. What is more, to get to the meetings, especially in Westland districts, in South Otago and Southland, in the King Country, and in North Auckland, they often perform feats the equal of some of those described in " Summer Sports": as when a Waitemata crew rowed thirty miles through open water to compete at Mahurangi Heads. That was "in those early days." But it is not long since the reviewer came across a country footballer in a Canterbury district where his team required him to ride a horse thirty miles to the nearest ground or assembling point, and where his work required him to ride back after the match (or, at best, or worst, after the dance in. the. evening when the horse, no doubt, would have recovered.) And it is less than ten years since an especially enthusiastic runner, to get himself fit for a cross-country race in South Canterbury, travelled on foot from the Hermitage to Timaru, jogtrotting most of the 130 miles. They still breed some of them tough; although only a few surviving old-timers, like the famous Dave Pretty, once of Hamilton, now living near Wellington, would be able to tell us how the later generations really compare. Dave is well (Continued on next page)

Summer Sports (Continued from previous page) remembered by this Survey as "a giant among axemen." They used a fatter log than the axemen trim for the meetings now. Dave Pretty chopped 21 inches at a time. Now they slice through 12 and 14-inch logs, so it would be difficult to compare times, Denny Hoey, North Islander, holds the Centennial Championship, but his time of 60 seconds for an ‘18-inch log was nothing to amaze many bushmen, "Men Like These " Men like these, and sports like these, are the real sports of the country. They are fiercely competitive. If you have Australian bushwhackers in the same camp as New Zealanders you'll get as. much work done as a squatter could ° get out of a mixed party of Australian and New Zealand shearers. But there is a different spirit to the competition. A man’s fame rests on real ability. Build-ups and publicity do not matter at all. Tennis and Swimming Tennis, on the other hand, is a sport in which the wrong sort of competitive spirit develops very easily-and, in this country as in others, has developed. But here again New Zealand has failed by world standards. There is enough locallyinduced jealousy to make a dozen Tildens, but the invigorating impetus from outside is missing and none since Wilding has gone overseas with a background. strong enough to carry him through the ordeal of big-time tournaments. Among swimmers, "Tiny" Freyberg is the only one to find for himself a

special place in the "Summer. Sports" illustrations. But it is actually a woman who deserves most attention. Gwitha Shand, who represented New Zealand at the 1924 Olympics, is the only swimmer of either sex to earn us a world record. Popular as swimming is in New Zealand, and necessary as it may be to a country where death by drowning was and is so common, New Zealand has remained, in this as in so many other sports, a secluded corner where men and women play as nature makes them able, and not as association forces them. Few swimming clubs outside the main centres are ever very strong, financially or numerically. In few towns or cities are any very great provisions made for training competitive swimmers. In fact, the capital city, with its concentrated population, offers swimming facilities less attractive than those provided by many a borough council. Three pages for bowls, and two for yachting, complete the survey. Every sportsman will wish that his own sport could have been covered separately. But that was hardly the job of historians setting out to provide a backbone of reference. That they have done this, and made it interesting at the same time, is a tribute to their ability and ingenuity. |