HEROISM AT FOOTBALL.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 8708, 2 February 1894, Page 3

HEROISM AT FOOTBALL.

Sporting and Dramatic News.

There is often no inconsiderable amount of it at a League match. "Le Klckball," as I once heard an enlightened and shiverlog Frenchman term our winter ecstasy, is not mere recreation—at least among professionals. It is exercise to order. The dav'may be one of direst drizzle, and the df-d abbot as trustworthy and firm as the Bog ot Allen. The players do not then slip into their jerseys with any large measure of enthusia.m. The goalkeeper, especially if he has not abi. backs to support him, and a weak set of forwards opposed to him, may well growl at being placed in the meteorological pillory' for ninety minutes. No matter. A league fixture is something only a shade le .s rigid and inflexible r ban the laws of the ancient Medes and P -r-si-an. The committee Biv to th<* ofayers, "Of course you must play 1" The referee takes up his parable: "My good fellows, I have travelled about seventy miles l to earn the guinea that so inadequately remunerates mc for the iuciviliti.s I have to eudure at your hands and the public's. I mean to earn that guinea with as little expenditure of time as possible. In five minures I shall sfcarfc the game." And the populace, that thousand-voiced tyrant. I frsts and fumes and menaces the players I and referee alike with all sorts of agreeable adjectives if they conspire to disappoint it. "Surely," cries this genial populace, i*' if we are such blooming idiots .the customary expression would be strouger, bat this may pass as a sub.titnte) as to come and stand by the score of hundreds in thibeastly drizzle, you may run about, and kick the ball, and get warm in it." The committee of the average League team ! lives and mores in mingled terror of, and affection for, the mob whose grimy sixpences are its mainstay. As a rule, therefore, the mob wins the to being allowed to call the referee a variety of inelegant names when he does his duty manfully in despite of them. But the.c are worse things than drizzles on the football field. How about a storm from the north-west, the wind but just below, hurricane force and periodically touching that, witb bliudiug snow ana sleet rushing before tbe wind, a ground three or four inches deep in mingled snow and slush, and the goal-posts set due northwest aud south-east.

Such were the conditions the other afternoon (November 18th), and curiosity led mc to a League football field to see if really professional hardihood and obdience might not find this state of affairs too much for them. It was the vilest day imaginable, and probably no worse has ever troubled our temperate zone (so we fondly term it) since it settled into cxi.ting form of temperance. In an Irish frieze overcoat to my heels, exposed to the elements no where, I shivered as I walked, and found the fury of the wind and tearing sleet bard to combat. "Of course there will be no game," I said to myself, once, twice, aud thrice. But when 1 reached the ground, lo! there they were, struggling at it—a veiled congregation of particoloured shirts seen darkly through*a cruel mist of snow. The storm howled at the backs ot the assailants and blew in the faces of the assailed with all its fusillade of snow and sleet as if it meant to blow them inside out.

The affair was a farce, and a grim one at that. Probably Sunderland or Aston Villa, set -w_c__ their noses aeainsit the storm to oppose Darwen, helped by the wind, would have don. no better than the luckless te»_n which, in this case, had lost the toss. It was like tossiug for the game itself. The weakest kick with the wind sent the ball along famously, and there was no judjdtiß- its deviations when the defenders tried to stop the thing. There could not have been a day more gravely calculated to try the stamina of men. The defending half-backs and backs, kick as tbey might, could not get the ball away. There was no pause for them. Messrs Sisyphus and Tantalus could hardly have been allotted a more disheartening occupation. Of course goalwere kicked. They followed each other fast. The much-tried backs and goalkeepei themselves give goals In their frantic efforts to fight that tremendous ally—the wind. Once only In three-quarters of an hour did the ball cross the dividing line. It was then easy for the goalkeeper at the other end (with his back to the blast and disconcerting snow) to defeat the breathless and snowbound forwards who. when near him, shot at a venture as though it Were a matter, of life and death to them to get rid of .the ball as quickly as possible. .The _e.eree; trotted about, as cdnscifetvtioUs - rete_ _tes;f __ _st 7* • He, too, however, got'his -eyes closrged with snow when he faced the wind. There were fouls enough. When his Back was to the north west, he had a tolerable chance ot perceiving them and giving the penalty. In the other case he might as well have been on the top of St. Paul's Cathedaal for all his powers of discernment were worth. All things conspired against the team that had lost the toss.

''Wait,'' murmured in muffled tremulous tones to one auother the spectators who supported the team unsupported by Dame Chauce. "Wait.for the next half. It'll be just the same only t'other way about." That was the fond aspiration of many. But the hope was not realised.' A league team in training may be expected to " last" through an hour and a half of ordinary weather and ordinary or even extraordinary exertion. But phenomenal effort of .his kind was enough to wear out any man In three quarters of an hour. Moreover, at. the interval the gale moderated for awhile. It was still perlshingly cold and it still snowed, but tbe alliance of the wind, which, had veered a point, was much less precious. You should have seen these two-and-twcuty pros come off the field when the whistle had sounded. Some had plumcoloured faces and some were the hue of old red brick. On all, their hair lay flat and soaked, and in.limp dejected wisps over their brows and by their ears. The word "jaded" cannot convey an idea of their physical exhaustion. They had no breath to spare to respond to the broad courtesies of their friends who proudly gave them escort towards the dressinghouse. Could they have been photographed in body and mind, as in those moments few people would have thought them overpaid for their professional labours. £140 a year (the recently constituted mi\xtmum-stipend of a professional football player) may seem an excellent and desirable wage, but thiuk of the tests -that have to. be borne ere it can be earned, qliit. apart from the undoubted skill that must also be acquired. It is scarcely fair to say that £3 a week tor an hour.aud a half's physical exercise is absurdly too 'much. As well might you ridicule the extravagance of Sir Charles Russell in marking as a 50_-gulnea brief papers with which one day's hard work will familiarise him. No man can become Attorney-General without a long and arduous course of legal experience. No man can become a football pro. of the (ir_ rank without a severe (and not altogether pleasurable), training in»Vmany football fields*,.and against many different kinds of foes. You must know something about human nature, as well as much about leather, ere you may hope to become a popular idol as a crack football player; and, as I have implied,' you must be capable of heroic feats ot self-control and discipline. But on this occasion, as on many others in the football field, in our dear inclement climate, there was at least a little heroism among the spectators as well as the players. You may call it the very anticlimax of selfishness if you like.- The same may often be said ot men who have done deeds tbat have got the V.C., or public consideration quite as valuable. It might also be called the "ne %>l\is ultra" of imbecility and fanaticism, C_.ll it what you please, however, there they were, about eight hundred of them, purplefaced, shivering members ot the British public, whose love of spectacular football exceeded_ their dread of. the manifold fleshly ills in the way of which they thus audaciously thrust themselves.. It was an amazing sight. You wou,ld have thought that in such weather no one except a homeless dog and the professional football player would have osen found voluntarily out ot doors. The wind pierced; like a knife, the snow pervaded . everything, and under foot it was as distressing as it well could be. .

I suppose ninety per cent otthe crowd were working men and boys. " The odds were, judging from their swarthy hands (though the cold hid much of their dirt) that they had sped hither straight from their workshops and factories. I heard one of them—a youth bf seventeen br so— admit he had had no dinner. He shook like the flags on the sticks that marked the bounds of the playing field. Uis teeth chattered: his face .was pile as an ill-con-ditioned sheet one moment and the colour Of raw unwholesome beef the next; and he was without an overcoat, without even a neckerchief. The snow shotin at his. shirt front as coal is emptied at a run-down of al metropolitan coal hole. There were others like him. They did what they could by huddling together in self-protect!.. , but it was a most unequal strife with the storm at the best. And aU the time, heedless of their bodily miseries, they did their utmost to concentrate theiracrention upon the game, and they yelled their convential encouragement to ths team they favoured.

!The other ten. per cant were better clad, and tried to smoke pipes. The Englishman does love to pretend to be Indifferent to tha weather. At times when tho men ot every other nationality under the sun would nestle indoors, he rams his hat 00 his head, lights his brier, and defies the elements in all their corporate strength to do him harm, or knock his conceit out of him. These ten per centers watched the game stolidly with their legs set weU apart and made no more of the staggering gusts than it they had been breaths through a pea-shooter. But the sight of a hundred or two illclad boys under fifteen thus trying a fling with consumption and all its kindred evils was an uncomfortable one. I wonder what their respective mothers would have done if they had been brought upon the field and let loose among us .

History gives full reports ot the football players who come to their end in the exercise of their vocation. The daily papers (at least the provincial oues) follow the progress of a professional centre forward's illness with as much eagerness and particularity as If he were a premier. Tbey dwell fondly on the various stages in his career, aud in almost fulsome language signify the hope that a youngt life of such hearty promise and performance is not to be prematurely snuffed out. if be dies they relapse to the Inquest, nob one word uttered at which escapes them. The medical opinion supplies the text tor a leader, or at least a longish paragraph in big type. Then comes tbe funeral. Upon my soul, if a public demonstration of interest iv one's coffin after death be something really desirable, I for one would as lief join the great majority from a snapped spine on a football field as after two or three score years of philanthropy of the most national and blatant kind. The other day about fifteen thousand men, women and children amassed to see a halfback carried .0 the grave. The poor lad was but twenty-three, and save as a football player he had distinguished himself iv no way, yet he cocld not have been more seriously, vociferously and publicly lamented.

- But history tells us less about tho spectators to whom their illimitable interest in professional football proves fatal. They just take a chill, and adjourn to the other world without any fuss; nor do Member, of Parliament pay the expenses of their funerals.

I dare say I might have put a mora significant word than "heroism" at the head of this page. No matter; I will not change it. Undoubtedly this obstinacy, tenacity, pluck, or whatever you prefer to call it, is a flue element in our national character., out, save to the Malthuslans among us, it will be a satisfaction when the finances of our League Clubs will enable them to build covered arches for protection against the weather of their teams and their supporters alike.