Suva Now Has A Table

Tennis Assoc.

But Fijians Would Like to Play "Real Tennis"

Suva, May 12.

mHE clickety-clock of table tennis balls A has long been a familiar sound in the neighbourhood of the police stations and depots round Suva. It is a game that has a strong appeal for Fijians, but the police are among the few Fijian organisations which have been able to acquire orthodox equipment.

Having been all but laid out by a table tennis ball that pinged from a window of the Water Police station one quiet Saturday afternoon (no one but a Fijian policeman could have bashed such velocity into airy celluliod or could commiserate with the victim of the assault with such emotion), the ocrrespondent began an in vestigation.

It was learned that a Police table tennis team had just massacred the staff of the Suva Mental Hospital and was on the brink of a second contest with Draiba (a colony of Fijian Government servants).

All this happened early in the year. In May the Suva Tennis Table Association materialised, with 14 clubs ready for affi liation, including Police, Draiba, Fiji Military Forces, Central Medical School, Mental Hospital, New Zealand Air Force, Holy Trinity and a Chinese and several Indian organisations.

Several Fijian athletes have told the writer that their great desire is to play tennis lawn tennis.

But it has apparently never occurred to anyone that Fijians might want to play tennis or that many of them have the making of good players.

Chinese and Indians may play with impunity but the Fijian is left out.

It works back to the usual thing: The Fijian unlike the Asiatic, will not push himself in if he has a suspicion that he might be either unwanted or, worse still, patronised. Unfortunately, few of his alein competitors suffer from similar deli cacy of feeling.