On Footballs—and Afterthoughts

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 49, 19 June 1931, Page 10

On Footballs—and Afterthoughts

ey days gone by, when I vigorously punted a football upfield, I had little. knowledge of the thought, care and skill. which had been employed by its manufacturers to make it "boot proof." Certainly I had vaguely realised that the ball was once part of the top coat of

a perfectly respectable bullock, but there the matter ended. Mr. Darlow, in a talk from Auckland on Thursday, supplied some illuminating data on the subject. Not only must the more exposed parts of the hide (the back, for instance) be selected for the best balls, but the twine must be heavily steeped in water-proof coating; the panels must be carefully: graded and weighed for balance; the stitching must be done by hand-in fact no detail must he overlooked in providing a ball which shall

withstand the vigorous onslaughts of All Blacks made, or in the making. Cheaper grades are made from the sides of the hide, and are:’ machine-sewn; cheaper grades still are: made from the underneath section. ° ‘T he talk, coming as it did under the. auspices of the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Association, provided one more plea for New Zealandmade goods. Strange to say, I recently travelled with a’ business man to whom I was extolling these sentiments. He

put rather a different viewpoint forward. While he, has no quarrel with the idea of shutting our markets to the "foreign" made, this business man deplores the modern tendency of curtailing our buying on the British market for the sake of supporting our already heavily subsidised secondary industries. He puts it thus: "However excellently our secondary industries may be supported, the only prop for our Dominion finance is the realisation of our primary products. How can we expect our only customer (the United Kingdom) to buy our goods if-we offer no reciprocal trade?’ When I reminded him. of our strong proBritish tariffs he rejoined ... "If you intend drowning .a-cat, does it matter if you elect to do so in two feet of water or in twelve?" Certainly it is a viewpoint worthy .of very careful consideration because, with the best will in the world, New Zealanders can hardly hope to eat, for example, nearly 1% ewts. of butter each per annum (to say nothing of wearing a young mountain of wool) and so keep the market cleared for our thousands upon thousands of primary producers, To bite off our nose to spite our face,.or to. jump from the frying-pan into the fire, are equally painful alternatives. In brief, with our population, and with our economic makeup, are we on the fight track in this ardent supporting. "of ° comparatively minor secondary industries? .