Passing from what is commonly called sport to athletic games, we tread safer ground. One of these games, football, is quite as popular as horse-racing--indeed, among boys and lads more popular; and whatever may be its future, football has up to the present time been a clean, honest, genuine game, free from professionalism and excessive gambling. The influence of the New Zealand Rugby Union, with its net-work of federations and clubs, has been and still is a power for good; and though it is true that the famous and successful visit of the “All Black” team to Great Britain has lately been parodied by a professional tour in England and Wales, there is still hope that professionalism may be held at bay. For, as yet, the passion for football, which is perhaps the main peculiarity of New Zealand athletics, is a simple love of the game, and of the struggles and triumphs attending it. The average New Zealand lad and young man looks for nothing but a good hard tussle in which his side may win and he, if luck wills it, may distinguish himself. As yet, money-making scarcely enters into his thoughts. The day may come in New Zealand, as it has in England, when bands of skilled mercenaries, recruited from far and near, may play in the name of cities and districts, the population of which turns out to bet pounds or pence on their paid dexterity. But, as yet, a football match in the colony is just a whole-hearted struggle between manly youths whose zeal for their club and town is not based on the receipt of a weekly stipend. [Illustration: CHRISTCHURCH]