FOOTBALL.

Feilding Star, Volume II, Issue 534, 30 March 1908, Page 4

FOOTBALL.

THE GAME IN AMERICA. In an article on the increased popularity of Rugby football on the Pacific Coast, the New York Evening Post says: — "The question is often asked, 'How did Stanford learn the game?' The answer is sufficiently simple. Summer before last the head coach spent the summer in Vancouver, where the local Rugby teams gave him all the assistance in their power to help him in learning the game, and last summer he spent in Australia and New Zealand, where again he experienced a most generous and sportsmanlike hospitality, accompanying the New Zealand Blacks on their tour as a guest. Now this coach is considered as the best disciplinarian and strategist that we have ever had ; his enthusiasm for the inter-collegiate game was unbounded and likewise practical, for his teams have never been beaten. Nevertheless, this young man, having had ample opportunity to supplement his four years' coaching at the old game, and his two years of Rugby with a course of football study at such diverse centres at New Haven. Cambridge, and Princeton, on the one hand, and Auckland and Sydney on tho antipodeal hand, has become an unreserved advocate of Rugby. In addition, the trainer for track and field sports, who looked for troublo and usually found it for track men in inter-collegiate games, now sends his men into Rugby without let or hindrance. He also volunteers statements to the effect, firstly, that men have to be in better condition to play Rugby than the ' coaches' game, and secondly, that the men are in better shape for evening work, and far more elastic in spirit with Rugby than under the old exhausting grind of mass and momentum plays. Consequently, he is in favour of Rugby."