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Boxing

The Tournament proved something of a disappointment to the Victoria boxing team; not so much because we were optimistic prior to the tournament itself, but rather because of the fact that having won all our preliminary bouts, numbering five altogether, we regarded ourselves as somewhat unlucky in not being able to take advantage of such a fine start. We were however defeated by the narrowest of' margins, and we were undoubtedly not entitled to win on our efforts, even though in the circumstances these were better than we had hoped.

As mentioned we won all five preliminary contests on Saturday morning and went on in the evening to win two finals, being closely defeated in two other finals. Indeed, had our lightweight representative not had such an enervating fight in the morning, he might have been able to swing the scales in our favour by dint of his superior strength and fitness, against an experienced and ringwise boxer in Frank Davis of Auckland.

Individually the light heavyweight division was won by Jim Donald for Victoria, who turned on a display in the evening superior to his preliminary fight, which he won closely. Donald fought very strongly, punching mainly to the head with straight lefts and rights, and gained the verdict largely from his cleaner blows.

Bob Street was successful in the middleweight class and as usual, he gave us the benefit of a policed display of boxing, both his bouts ending in technical knock-outs. Street is a great strength to the club, and has now won the title twice in succession.

Tony Keesing did well to outpoint his Otago opponent in the morning, beating him fairly easily, but against a horse of a different colour in the evening, he was outpointed by O'Sullivan of Auckland. Showing great gameness Keesing stuck it out remarkably well, and O'Sullivan was hard pressed to score points at all stages. Tony was our featherweight representative.

Bruce Brown turned on two sound and skilful fights and was unfortunate to be beaten in the evening only by virtue of his opponent's superior fitness. Brown had to fight probably the fittest man in the Tournament. He was the welterweight representative.

Our last representative was Mick Davis, of Massey, a lightweight who fought surprisingly well to severely beat a skilful boxer in Button of Canterbury—later going on to run Frank Davis very close. F. Davis had a very hard fight was at an immediate disadvantage—in the circumstances his fighting deserves high praise.

None of our boxers were awarded blues.