 stage began to improve, working well through them.Laing again got it and made another dash, but minus result when half-time was called.Only a few minutes' spell was allowed, when the blues kicked away to the southward, and followed passing and scrimmaging, barren of results, till the ball went nearly out of bounds at the southern end, and was then dribbled into a water-hole near the Grandstand, and blue once more forced down; the players looking like a cage of mud-bespattered drowned rats.