FROM A SUBURBAN BALCONY

Evening Star, Issue 20474, 3 May 1930, Page 2

FROM A SUBURBAN BALCONY

ON THE BALL: A FOOTBALL HOMILY The football season lias begun. As J. sit on my balcony here I see tho boys busy with their football on tlio school playground. As an old footballer, a former captain of my High School, and a goalkeeper in my university team, 1 still retain a special interest in the game. Indeed, I can hardly watch a match in progress without, feeling 1 would like to be in the thick of it again. Cricket is the national game of England. Mr Mulgan, in Ins very interesting book, ‘ Home,’ recently published, says. “No other nation could have evolved a game at once so leisurely and so illogical, and then become so excited about it.” And he quotes from a poem of Professor Arnold Wall, who speaks of it as The beautiful, beautiful game That is battle and service and sport and art. It is a gentle aristocratic game. Mr Mulgan compares it to a beautiful woman gathering flowers, classical touched with romanticism. Yet in certain positions the player needs to have his wits alert. I recall how once, when playing for my university, I was mid-wicket. A swift, hard stroke of the batsman drove the ball in an instant between my eyes, and the subsequent proceedings interested mo no more —for a long time. 1* ootball is generalty considered a rougher and more dangerous game, but cricket thus made a deeper impression upon mo than anything that ever happened to me on the football field. Football is the rough-and-tumble, democratic game. It is natural, therefore, that it should be the more popular one in the dominion, and especially Rugby, which was the game I was accustomed to. Now lam only a spectator. When playing action was primary, now action is no longer possible to me; only thinking is left. So I am going to set down a few points that may make a kind of football homily. Ihey may be commonplace; others may have noted them and put them more pithily. But stale truths—and falsehoods—may serve fresh men. So here goes. . • fl ® ♦

The first impression a stranger would have who did not know anything about the game would probably be the intense earnestness and enthusiasm of the players. There is no sign of halting, of lacbadaisicalness, of go slow, or go as you please among them. They are all enthusiastically in earnest in t.he business in hand. If only thus all! If we could get tins same earnestness and enthusiasm into everyday work the world would soon bo transformed. The curse of the world to-day arises from two things—from men and women who are indolent, who lack devotion to any good or great cause, who are content to saunter through life, feast at its rich -tables and go away without paying their bills}-- And then, at the other extreme, men and women who have to work laboriously but have no joy in their labour, who feel that it is a curse to be got through anyhow, and to escape out of it quickly in order to ‘bo happy. On© who looks at the conditions under which a great deal of modern labour is performed must feel that there is some justification for this spirit apd attitude towards it. Yet if it becomes general it would not abate the curse of labour, it would only deepen and intensify it. Says a wellknown writer; “The Bible is right. Work is a curse. By inventions, by social organisation, and by the slow maturing of the human mind, we are gradually lifting the curse and getting all human exertion out of the grad© pt wages into the realm of play.” The signs of this are not very manifest. Nevertheless, ■ the hop© is that they will increase, for if workers in every sphere would carry into these efforts tho enthusiasm that distinguishes the football players, the world would soon he transformed.

But the enthusiasm of the footballers is enthusiasm with a right motive and directed to the proper end. It is an unselfish enthusiasm. When the game is properly played no man thinks of himself. He thinks of the game. He is ready to deny himself, to pass the ball to another if that is the best way to win. And governing all is the referee. His whistle is master of the field. Obedience to him, even though a player may think him wrong, is the player’s prime duty. For Only obedience can be great’ That brings the Golden Age again. E’en to bo still, abiding fete, Is kingliest ministry of men. It is good to be the servant of enthusiasm. As Dr Marjfcineau says: “The active votary of any harmless object is better than the passive critic of all; and tho dullest man who lives only to collect shells or coin is worthier than the shrewdest who lives only to laugh at him.” Devotion to science is all right, but devotion to man is better still. We badly need enthusiasm in the service of others. In a shipwrpek on the coast of Spain a life-saving service sent out the message: “Terrible storm on the coast last night. One hundred bodies washed ashore this morning. We rendered all the service wo could through tho speaking trumpet.” That was not the method of Grace Darling or Florence Nightingale. But it is, the method of too many in the community, too many even among tho crowds that every week watch the football game, where the need and value of tho very opposite gospel is seen in operation before their eyes. There is seemingly one exception to tins team enthusiasm —the goalkeeper. He stands by himself outside the struggle, watching it more or less alertly from afar. And yet ho is possibly the most critical figure in the game. He is a kind of forlorn hope, on whom hang the issues of the contest. And lie is a picture seen often enough in tho great game of life. These lonely figures standing steadfast and watchful at then.’ posts of duty—-

victuals and nations depended on them! One thinks of the sentinels of an army at the outposts of our Empire, where a handful of men keep their lonely watch and ward; or of missionaries away in desert places, exiles from all tho amenities of civilisation, hearing nothing from week-end to week-end but alien speech, and disgusted by the degradation and barbarities of savagery, and perhaps longing often for a word of courage or a congenial companionship. And yet how frequently it has haphow often have the destinies of indipened that it was upon solitary groups and individuals like these great destinies have hung. There is indeed a sense in which every life must stand in a loneliness known only to itself. It realises its post of duty, and there It must do or die. Tho lighthousekeepers round our sea coasts—how solitary a life is theirs! But they must keep tho lights burning. Why? Because it is a trust committed to them in the interests of others. Wo are all in a sense goalkeepers, lighthousekeepers. Wo must not leave our post. We must not let our light go out. “We have our jilace as part of the great order which makes the world secure.” f • * .*

And that leads to another point. One of the characteristic differences between cricket and football is that the former is a summer game, the latter a winter one. Therefore it is not a game for nice, comfort-loving young men. It is a game for men who are robust, who are not afraid of the rough and tumble, the cold, and the wet. It has to be played often when the ground is muddy and soft and slippery. This makes tho hazards of tho game. It is often lost by the player—the goalkeeper—slipping and falling at tho critical moment. And the game of life is full of such slippery places. It has, in fact, always to be played on a slope, where one is liable to slip down at any moment. That is the meaning of evolution, which is the master light of our knowledge everywhere. An old Hebrew poet speaks of certain people whoso feet were placed in slippery places. But it is we ourselves who are really responsible for that. And so the game is lost. Where and what these slippery places are the experiences of life and the facts of history indicate very clearly. And the football gam© emphasises the wisdom of watching out" for them and using every effort to avoid them.

Of only one otter tiling will space allow mention. The football game is a fine illustration of what may be called the law of indirectness. It is rarely won by a straight frontal attack. The goal is nearly always gained by a side manoeuvre or indirect dodgery. And is it not the same in the greater game of life? Evil is rarely vanquished by a frontal combat; goodness is not achieved by aiming directly at it. No man becomes a poet or an orator or a saint in that way. The sea wears away tho coast not by a straight-out frontal blow, but by swirl and circle along the beach line. Relative to this truth also is the fact that the best results of the game are not tho winning of tho game, but the winning of the character in the process of doing so. The object of the game is not to get the ball over the goal post in any circumstances, for if that were so it would be best done at night, when everybody is asleep. No, the object is to got it over tho goal bar in the face of opposition. But this opposition has the indirect effect of creating and culturing and toughening character. This is its real value and its most abiding influence, just as the real gain of the angler is not the fish he brings back in his basket, but tho health he acquires in his unconscious contact with Nature. It may be a legend that Wellington said Waterloo was won in the playgrounds of Eton. But it is simple truth to say that character is won—and character is destiny—in every game where men learn

To set the cause above renown, To love the game beyond the prize, To honour while you strike him down The foe. that comes with fearless eyes. To count the life of battle good, And dear tho land that gave you birth; And dearer yet the brotherhood That binds tho brave of all the earth. Ron.