NZ’s Warm Reaction To Fijian Footballers

THE Fijian team of Rugby foot ballers which recently toured New Zealand made an ex traordinarily happy impression on the people of the Dominion. Their excellent behaviour, invariable good temper and the clean, open football which they played delighted the New Zealanders. Fiji never sent abroad a party of more successful ambassadors of goodwill. Here is how a well-known NZ newspaper, the Marlborough Express, summed it up:— RUGBY followers and admirers of good sportsmanship generally will salute the Fijian tourists )n their excellent win over the Maori representatives at Wellington yesterday.

Few of the many overseas teams hat have travelled through the Dominion have established a finer >r friendlier reputation than these sland neighbours. They readily jvercame the handicap of race, anguage and our cold climate to vin admiration, respect and full icceptance into the generous circle ►f the Rugby code.

They achieved that by their eemly conduct, open friendliness ,nd genuine appreciation of hos litality, and by the football they ilayed.

On the field they were an instan aneous success as crowd-pleasers. md they succeeded simply because hey insisted on playing the style f Rugby that, quite obviously, New lealand crowds want.

Perhaps they did not know any ther style. Their game is a care ree, open-passing form, contrasting dth the dour, colourless forward bruggles that the Springboks have irgely dictated as the correct and nly thing in international com etition.

TST the light of the heart-searching . that has been going on in Rugby’s concentric circles, a jmark passed by the Fijian team’s lanager sharply rings a gong.

“One thing we will not take away ith us,” he said, “is this grim for ard game you have here. It may 3 sound, but it is dull and does not lit the Fijian character.”

Judging from the delighted re gion of the crowds at the Fijian atches and the sporting response : New Zealand teams in playing le visitors at their own exhilarat es game, it suits the New Zealand mperament but little better.

Our club, provincial and national des (as many of our school sides ready do) could provide the Fijian •and of sport even within the usting rules if there were the :ample, the will and the en gagement both on and off the -Id. The example has been given

us once again, for it can fairly be said of the Fijians that they came ito learn and stayed to teach.

Will the lesson stick? The last two local representative matches, in which the level fell so dismally be low that in the game against Fiji, more than hint that there has been a swift lapse into old, uninspiring ways.

It has been reported that Lloyd’s of London will probably leave on the ocean bed off Lae, New Guinea, the £35,000 worth of gold lost in a plane accident on July 16.

Marine salvage expert, Captain J.

W. Herd, said in Brisbane recently that he would recommend resump tion of a search for the gold, in his report to Harvey Trinder Pty., Ltd. (NSW), Lloyd’s brokers. They em ployed Captain Herd to search for the gold. Captain Herd thought that the brokers would probably call off a further search, and that Lloyd’s might decide to sell the sal vage rights to another organisation.

The Baptist Union Assembly, which met in Brisbane on Septem ber 13, was informed that Baptist missionaries in New Guinea will use a plane in their work next year.

Two missionary trainees are already qualified as pilots.

Sunday, September 2, was ob served as New Guinea Martyrs’ Day in Brisbane Anglican churches. Sep tember 2 is set aside each year in remembrance of the 9 white mis sionaries and 2 native lay helpers who were killed in New Guinea by the Japanese. Six were from Queensland.

Scientists who have returned to United States from an exploration of the Pacific report discovery of a mountain rising more than two miles from the ocean floor, 700 miles NW of Hawaii. It is probably the world’s largest, has a base 18 miles wide, and lies a mile below the sur face.