THE DANGERS OF FOOTBALL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9022, 7 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE DANGERS OF FOOTBALL.

Having regard to innumerable accidents chronicled in the football field, a good many persons who are not, as a rule, very careful of their bones and skin, have asked whether it will not be necessary sooner or later to revise the rules of that exceedingly popular game, with the view of lessening its danger. For obvious reasonsfootball, under the strictest rules, must be a rough game, and we certainly have no desire to see it put down, as several coroners' juries have suggested ; but we do desire to see those who are guilty of needless violence dealt severely with by their respective clubs. Football is essentially a poor man's game. It needs no expensive outfit, and, so far as small local clubs are concerned, it does not call for very serious travelling expenses. Clubs are now so numerous that a weekly match can be brought off within a very small radius from the headquarters of any. It is because the bulk of footballers are, comparatively speaking, poor men that they should be as exempt as poseibie from injury. If the man who can afford to take a hunting box and hunt four or five days a week gets laid up for a fortnight, there is no very serious result to anybody, but to a youth learning a trade, to the cierk whose good handwriting is his living, or to the traveller whose calling needs activity and the ability to move easily about, permanent injury to a limb may mean ruin and a month in bed the loss of salary for a corresponding period. These are no unimportant matters, and though we would not wish the working man, whether he works with his head or his hands, to degenerate into a milksop, wo should certainly like to see him indulging in a game which is not made needlessly hazardous. It may be objected that in proportion to the number of footballers the tale of accidents is small, but we do not think so. Those who interest themselves in the chronicles of the game know that injuries more or less eevereare very common— far more so, it appears to us, than in any other pastime ; and only a email proportion of cases find their way into the* papers.— Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News.