20TH CENTURY SPORT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 769, 15 April 1954, Page 8

20TH CENTURY SPORT

(From REPORT DG _ 1001-Fun_ and Games in Old New Zealand; prepared for safe. deposit, pending completion of a building for the National Archives.) OOKING back at the photographic records of the nineteen-fifties, Dr. Boon, professor of sociology at the University of Taihape, drew my attention toa very puzzling phenomenon. It was the very frequent occurrence of people wearing highly-coloured jackets, sometimes piped round the edges, but in every case bearing a monstrous}y emblazoned badge on the left breast. It usually took some highly symbolic form of inconsiderable artistry, with a peuumbra of hieroglyphics, and, quite often, a succession of figures such as 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954. It did not take our mathematics department more than a month or two to determine that these numbers bore no reference to lottery numbers, but were, in fact, date designations in the calendar of that day. It was almost accidentally that the honour fell to me of discovering that these peculiar short coats were called "blazers"; that everybody seemed to possess one, two or three of them; that they did not have any religious or political significance; and that they were, in short, the insignia of various sporting fraternities or codes. (Incidentally I was awarded an honorary doctorate for pointing out this technical term to the English department: they had _ been greatly puzzled to elucidate a phrase of those days, "get to blazes," until I suggested that it was an obvious corruption of "blazers" into which, at a command from the club captain, these people scrambled joyously on two days of the week or more.) Working on a United States of the Pacific Scholarship, I embarked on a special study of sport in those times, and now very briefly sketch some of my findings. Most of the records were destroyed when the atom bomb factory blew up in the eighties, so they may be subject to some slight correction. The most popular sport was Football, played partly with the hands-a rudely healthy game devoted to the pursuit of a leather bladder inflated (the scientific research department has determined) to 2.4 atmospheres. It was presided over by a referee, who blew a whistle to encourage both sides to stand still and glower at one another, while the crowd cheered or booed. How they would have loved to see our teams of today, where no referee is needed, and both sides freely award penalties against themselves, should they occur, taking and leaving the field in the knowledge that the final score is predetermined at nil‘all. : Another sport entailed the use of horses. This had a tremendous vogue, being eagerly followed by many who had never ridden or perhaps even seen a. horse. There was apparently more to the game than we may imagine, and

it involved a complexity of mathematics, and a fervour of fanaticism, that now afford much fruitful research to our mathematical and theological departments. I shall mention Golf very briefly. Nowadays, of course, the sonic hole, the homing ball and the radar-control club have reduced it to a game which all! can play (though a caddy with a degree in science is desirable). It did not occur to the turf-trampers and tee-toppers of the primitive steel dnd wood days that science would transform the game into a matter of grace-strokes. Perhaps the most aesthetic of their sports was Bowls as we still play it. Even then it was much favoured by elderly, young men who found Tennis too much for the temperament and Cricket rather too slow. But at the time of which I write there seems to have been some disappointment over Cricket. There were hundreds of other games -yachting, auto-cycling, swimming, shove-ha’penny and the Jike-for which you will have to consult my twentyvolume work (not the abridged one, on which I get rather smaller royalties). But there is one sport of which I can find only meagre records, and which I may modestly claim as my own great contribution to research. It was the sport of Tourist Baiting. One of the rules was that when an enlightened government department did all in its power to lure wealthy visitors to the country, and thus broaden their outlook, the sturdy and: semi-barbaric. inhabitants: of the place would do everything in their power to make them thoroughly uncomfortable. The result, in terms of sport, was that tourists were unable to eat or drink except at times dictated by their tormentors, and thus fell an

easy prey to the hardy natives. They were not in any other way positively encouraged to leave the country. But indeed the subject is endless. (Puchasers of my twenty volume work will have noted that another fifteen are ready for the telepress.) The significance and universality of sport in that epoch may perhaps best be brought home by pointing out that the usual form of greeting, from the highest to the lowest in the land, was "Hiya,

Sport

Denis

Glover