All Round Sportsman

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 664, 28 March 1952, Page 21

All Round Sportsman

O one could say that J. F. Mann, who is to conduct Calling All Sportsmen from 3YA this winter, is one of your armchair theorists. In working hours a physical education specialist in Christchurch schools, Mr. Mann is still a very active sportsman. He started accumulating sporting honours when he was a student at Christchurch Technical College. There he won the junior and intermediate athletic championships and was a member of hockey First XI and Rugby First XV. Hockey has remained one of his favourite sports, for besides representing Canterbury and Otago at this game, he captained New Zealand University teams in 1948, 1950 and 1951. Last year he toured Australia as captain of the University team. He is also a keen cricketer, a tennis and golf player, and holds executive positions in the New Zealand \Physical Education Society and the Pioneer Amateur Sports Club. ; Mr. Mann’s_ session, Calling All Sportsmen, will be heard from 3YA on the first Friday of each month at 7.15 p.m., starting on April 4. He thinks that Christchurch is a sportsman’s paradise -that is, for the man in the street who plays football, cricket, hockey, tennis, golf, softball and the rest-and in this first talk he says why he thinks so. In the course of a tour of some of the better known Christchurch sports grounds he recalls a few of the stirring occasions of the past (the first sports

day at Hagley Park, for instance, and the occasion when the first English cricket XI played on the Hagley oval), Listeners will hear a discussion with the groundsman at Wilding Park and learn something about. the work done by players and officials to produce a‘ hockey ground as neatly perfect as possible at Williamson Park. There’ll be a_ word, too, about the value to sportsmen of the great number of suburban parks in Christchurch-parks which give most players a practice ground just around the corner. For, as Mr. Mann says, training loses some of its boredom when there isn’t the tedium of travel.