GROWTH OF GAMES

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 61, 15 March 1924, Page 18

GROWTH OF GAMES

SEARCH FOR NEW OUTLETS.

An interesting result of the inquiries which have been conducted recently into the possibilities of recreation by the National Council of Social Service is the suggestion, which comes from Liverpool that we ought to set our minds to the discovery of new forms of outdoor games m order to get over the constantly increasing difficulty in all cities of discovering sufficient space for the playing of our present ones. As far as one knows says a correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian, ' this is a new departure in the history of games in Britain, where it can be said that games have "growed" rather than been invented. An excellent case m point is Rugby football, the centenary of which has just been celebrated, tor the game was evolved more or less by accident. No one can say that cricket was deliberately invented. No one ''discovered" cricket; it grew over a long period till popularity made it necessary to evolve a definite code and to standardise the rules. No doubt the earlier games were specially encouraged because they were useful training for war- they exercised the body, they taught the advantages of quick initiative in emergencies, and so forth, but they were evolved from the real conditions of rueffmentary warfare. J

Yet it should not be impossible to invent new games.; it may be possible even to make them popular. The Liverpool suggestion is for some kind of modified • fives which might be developed rather as squash" was developed in the Houses at Harrow. But this is a compromise ■ it is an adaptation of an existing ffame What remains to be seen is the possioUity of lnventinc; an entirely new game Have we covered all the possibilities of the ball? Do cricket and football golf and the two forms of tennis, polo', and baseball, rackets and fives, hockey and acrosse exhaust the variations of the ball game? Liverpool's initiative should set brains to work to supply an answer.