ORIGINAL AND SELECTED MATTER.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12377, 16 December 1905, Page 7

ORIGINAL AND SELECTED MATTER.

IHJ) GAMES AND NEW METHODS-.

i("TuE Spectator.") It is not often that the doings of a , football fifteen attract niucl notice, except among those who ato yoiuig enough to play +ho game themselves. Birt the continued success of ibe New Zealand Rugby football fifteen which is touring tho country this winter has al- ' ready suggested one or two tjuostions a Uttlo widor in import than xiere probJams of game-playing. Opinions may " differ «s to the success of other teams from Australia and the Antipodes which - have raited this country; tfero are con- • fiictuig views, for instance, os to" <ho jncnts of tho Australian ciicket teaii - njnch left England in September. But OS to tho capabilities of ike New Zcai land football fifteen there ore practically no differences of opinion, «r if there are, the team can always point for an answer to their record. They liavo played djeady twelve matches, have won all of them, »«d have scored altogether 60 goals and 44 tries, against their opponents' ono goal and two tries. The critics, naturally enough, are not entirely agreed as to what it is in the play of the fifteen tnat.enaUes them to score so heavily and consistently against the best English teams; but it eeems to be

admitted generally that, in addition to the close passing and great pace of the bacis, tho forwards have their own method* of work in the scrimmage, to which their opponent* have not yet got accustomed; and that the team as a ■n hole play with an elan and originality of attack bewildering to teams used hitherto only to each other. The New Zealandens, indeed, being first-rate nlhletesin the pink of condition and training, and playing above all with their deads, seem likely enough to go a ' long way through .'the season without a defeat. Possibly a picked British, team,

• which had played together for a mouth or two before* . meeting the colonials, might win a match; but it is unlikely ~ that any such, .team will be got together, „ end eran if it did win, it would etill be - ' nnrprising that o country with, co email ,' a population to pick from should have tp call"out the futt strength of the •. United Kingdom to beat it. " ■V., The success o? the team lias hod some r\ rather curious results. -It has sent tho * Critics writing to the newspapers, of- ", t course; and the gloomier-minded among c, , them have seen in it traces of a decline VJn British national physique, powers of ~ endurance, capacity to play games re- . j quiring nerve, and so on. It is urged that the conditions of life in the United - Kingdom are false and unwholesome, x that , they are' producing degeneracy |

.mnong; our .athletes, and that the men of : New Zealand; living largely in the take the only right View of -the conditions under which wen otyjht ifd'liyo and work and play.. ' We own *we have very little' sympathy with this ; kind of lamentation; We do not'see f*rjy;; signs that Among the classes from pwiwn '"< tho : teams ore picked who ; have Ipleyed tho.New Zealanders there is any in physique; end as for the iijjeged incapacity, or comparative incapacity, of Englishmen to play games stamina and assurance, you expect, .if the allegation were Jlounded on fact, to find Englishmen /being beaten in other outdoor sports bedsides -Rugby football. Yet the very ; is the case. There, are, no ■fdoubtj largo advantages in the climates ;'of.vAustralia and : Now Zealand, considered from an athlete's point.of view; j L-ifcey* ere 'drier and warmer than Eng— .Viand and Scotland, rheumatism is rare, land men oan keep their joints loose and limbs up to a lat|Or period ''of life tlian it-is possible to keep them •Lin vtlio Englidi drizzle. But does that I itnablo Australians and Now Zcalanders ?t*t'bj.%viii any (gain© they like to play? It |c«rtaihly doos not, or the Australian stsrickej; cloven which has just left us I would havo won a match against ono of /.the" English " test match " elevens, which fit/did not do; and if itibo argued that s'iit:would be surprising if so large a body •;(iof, athletes 'as our own cricketers could. I'not beat the Australians in-'represents iitiyei matches, it can be pointed out that J oiiruig the winter of the previous year j ftba representative Australian eleven was 5 ja-aten, in Australia, by a team which s;«drai,ttedly' was unrepresentative, of tho rfull.cricketing stwngthof England. As r;t6'other outdoor • games, neither tho "nor the Americans could jibcat: the best English players at the Recent internationiu tennis tournament, !«wh though the Englishmen'a metheda |were.dcscril»cd a', little, contemptuously j-ajf;? , back numbers" by come of the more fenthnsiastic partisans of the younger; i'countries.' In rowing, although tho (American Universities have inado itn'iueiise efforts, and liayo adopted all rtkinds of new and original styles, they have*never been ablo to send on <ight to Henley capable of taking the Grand iChellenge Cup over the Atlantic; ami at Ipolo, 'the English team in 19Q2, .which the ksv occasion when a series of interimtional matches was played, liad 'no difficulty in beating the best Amerij.can playei's, thouglx tho pains which ,;,their opponents had taken to learn the fnioeties of tho game, and to train their !:poni«a to play it, were as thorough- j Imping as are all American excursions ■ into English game-playing. Taken al- ; fogether,' tho evidence dc*e not show ;ihatthe "supremacy" in outdoor sports (.About which so much lias been written , Vno longer belongs to tho oldest game'playuig country. ' >i There is a very simple xoason, surely, .for tho continued miccess of the New Zealanders. AH Barnes are capable of 'development, can be played in this pr Jhat way, can be improved, or altered, ;or made more scientific, or more diffiicult, <Ten**witbout greatly changing the jTjiles. Take the case of Association football, for example. Thirty years agey 3 hen tho " old boy " teams were much . ore prominent in tho football world ■than they are tivday, the game was played in a very different way. It was still possible for the Old Etonians to win r ,the Football Association Cup, and the ;,n»embers of the' winning team played » geme not very unlike the Eton "lield" is to isay, whoet'or happened .to get the ball kept it as long as he conld, and it wa3 not on uncommon ; thing for ono of the forwards to dribble I half the length of the field. It wa3 not ! Jong before it was discovered, however, .".that" there was' money to be made out ;of Association football matches, t and when professionalism had onco, gripped the game, tho teams that kept to Ihe *old. methods were hopelessly beaten. i; 'Heading" nnd "passing" become so fidentific, and wero practised with such assiduity, that only those clubs ;>hich could dovot© tho lives of their to" football could hope to win j important matches. But tho • point to i •be noticed wee that tho strea of oonj- &&•■'•>■■■■ ' ; - :■:■■ ■'. :■ ■ -.'■; .'■- .■■'■■.■■■ "■"

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHOBS.

petition discovered all kinds of new " dodges/"' showed that players who stuck to tho old traditions must contin.no to be- beaten, and, in short, madt: it possible for tho game to be played weJl only by those who" were willing to give it extremely close study. Or take the enso of cricket. The other day one of the correspondents of the newspapers in an ainuiing letter recalled sui incident of tho cricket field when ho was a boy at Winchester. Practice was going on preparatory to tho " Lord's" match v. ith Eton, and one of tho candidates for admission into tho eleven had tho temerity io "pull" a ball from Luke Greenwood, who was a famous bowler of Iho day, to kg for nine, all run out. Ho was immediately dismissed from tho practice. Ho Imd so far broken the conventions and defied the etiquette of the gamo as to hit an off hall to leg for nine, instead of playing it to tho off for two or three, or possibly notio at nil. Now, in these days, since one or two daring spirits have left their mark on the game, and einco it has been recognised that after all runs do win matches, a player who could hit a number of bal'a of any kind anywhere for nino Would be counted'a very promising member of n cricket eleven; ho would bo sentineixth or seventh to upset all tho apple-carts, and if ho happened to pull a good length ball on the middle stump to over the head of deep square leg, them would be plenty of appreciation of what is not a very easy but a very effective stroke. The samo point emerges, that rules wero made for the.game, and,not the game for tho rules. , The daring innovator does Jiot so much break old rules txs make fresh ones. And so with Rugby football, which, since tho days when Crew, " the artful dodger," bowled over Scud East in the first game that Tom Brown saw played at Rugby, lias hardly been startled by the rule-breaker or revitalised by discoveries. f Twelve thousand miles away froni ,the school from which the game took its name, the descendants of tho football players of Tom Brown's day have been, playing the old game among themselves; but, because they have not played it with the older players as teachers, they have hit . upch secrets which the orthodox have missed. They will bo beaten in turn, Very likely, when their opponents have set themselves to discover the secret of their success; but meanwhile the innovators hold the field.

Wo are paying too grave an attention, it may bo suggested, to what after all is merely a game. Looking at it from one point of\view, we think hot. There is certainly a ludicrous side to the genoral dismay when it is remembered that .we have all been insisting lately that the great need is to devote less time to games and more to education and "grind." But there is a serious side also. It ought to be characteristic of any peoplo meaning to go forward to be determined to be taught by the enemy. That was one of- the greatest lessons of the Boer war; it was the lesson Which tho Austrian generals could not learn from Napoleon. Hβ broke all th<» rules of warfare, but he shattered the Austrian generals' armies. That national capability of learning • new methods is evinced in small aSairs such as football, jnst as plainly as in great matters such as war. If the English football, players wero unable to learn anything from the New team, or if they obstinately adhered to methods proved obsolete by their opponents, that would be evidence of a national characteristic which would have to'bo noted for what it wa3 worth, as a sign of changing times". But the evidence is the other way, we think. If in drio time the New Zealanders are beaten at tho game which they havo won the right to call their own, that will be evidence of a capacity for lesson-learning, which, so far as it goes, should be a matter of encouragement. • . . .