FOOTBALL IN VICTOKIA.

News was received hero a few days ago of a disgraceful fracas upou the football field in Tasmania, where high words and blows were exchanged between a Melbourne player and the umpire for the opposing team. This is nothing at all surprising, but it provokes me to say a few words about football and the scourge into which it has developed hi Melbourne. Ten years ago the Victorian game was a keenly relished spoit, and was pursued as a sport ought to be. There were a few dubs, the personnel of which was gonerally good, and the public at large took a legitimate amount of interest in the I game. Today the footballer is not what he was. He is for the most'part a roaring rowdy with some of the worst elements of the London rough and the colonial larrikin in his composition ; unhappily, moreover, he is in overwhelming numbers, and his iron heel is upon (the neck of his fellow citizens. This is in no sense an exaggeration. It is not [ too much to say that m the whole of Melbourne scarcely a handful of gentlemen would be found who now play football. Yet football, and nothing else, is the one staple of conversation, the one focus of attraction for the great mass of' people in tliese winter months. Melbourne distributes itself over the various ■ grounds upon a Saturday afternoon, an enormous amount of betting takes place upon the club matches, urchins and greyheaded men are alike ready to take or give the odds, and the grounds are a seething tumult of excitement and foul language. Continually magistrates remark that the language on the football field is " not what it should be." No, it

certainly is not — not quite. The fact is that football here has been degraded from a pastime into a profession. All the club matches in which much interest is taken are simply huge gate money concerns. The most prominent players are fellows who will hang about the ground all the week practising for the one occupation of their lives, and get, perhaps, a couple of guineas for playing for their clubs on a Saturday. And singular [ to say, the great majority of the gronnds on which these club matches are played and admission charged for are actually public reserves, and the people are illegally week after week deprived of their right of access to them. Why is this tolerated, it may be asked. Well, as regards municipalities and the general Legislature it must not be forgotten that there has come to be a solid footballers' vote which has to be pretty carefully looked after by candidates, such is the great number of votaries of the game. When the tyranny becomes absolutely unendurable, as it very nearly is, perhaps some concerted effort will be made by the Melbourne people to release themselves from the thraldrom in which they are held by "fearful football." — Correspondent Olago Daily Times.

FARM