KILLED ON FOOTBALL FIELD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14566, 31 December 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

KILLED ON FOOTBALL FIELD.

BRUTALITY OF THE AMERICAN GAME. "VARSITY CAPTAIN DEATH. 'J hk strenuou.sness with which American football matches are played has again created outcry, roused .immediately by the death of the captain of the West Virginia University eleven, Mr. Roderick Munk, alter a violent collision with another player in an inter-University contest.

The season has barely opened before two deaths are reported and a score injured, some pretty severely. It is pointed out by football reformers that a great many teams do not consist of genuine collegians, but of gangs of young toughs, big of brawn and small of brain, whose connection with the homes of learning is merely nominal.

As a sequel to Mr. Mlink's* death, Thomas Coy, of the Bethany College football team, was arrested on a charge of murder. It was said that Coy ran towards Munk in the toot hall Held ; and, ten yards behind the scrummage line, struck him in the back of the head with his list Munk fell, and Coy fell also, hut quickly regained hie feet, looked at Munk, and started oft' the field.

At. the inquest, after hearing fifteen witnesses, the coroner's jury decided that Munk, who was killed by a. blood clot 011. the base of the came by his death accidentally, and that Thomas Coy arrested on the technical charge of murder, should be acquitted of criminal responsibility.

( One. witness, Mr. McFarland, said he saw lists flying on ImjUi sides, but that he could not «swear whether Coy struck Munk or whether he just collided witti him. "Munk," said McFarland, struck the earth with terrific force, and I heard the umpire s?.v to some fellow, ' 1 don't want to catch you doing that again.' "

Mr. Homer, a young Pittsburg lawyer, who umpired the game, refused to testily positively that Coy struck Munk, and the Coroner, in summing up. declared that, practically every witness swore the deceased received his fatal injury '"in'the course of breaking up interference."

" So you mean." asked the foreman of the jury, that, if a, big man bumps into a little mail so hard that the little man dies from it, it is only breaking up interference?'

" Well, it isn't exactly that," the Coroner replied; "but breaking up interference is part of the football game' ■

In commenting• on the case, the New York World and other leading journals adopt the view that "a. friendly college contest that provokes an accusation of murder on one side against a player on the other is* not sport." Since Americans must have football, it is argued, why not substitute for the present college game, with its fatalities and injuries, the Association game as played in England, just as much skill is required and serious accidents are reduced to a. minimum.

Football has always been played more strenuously in America than in England. Indeed, it- has often been branded with the epithet, "brutal." In 1909 twenty-nine players were killed and nineteen so seriously hurt as to be permanently disabled. In 1908 eighteen players were killed and 135 seriously injured. As a result, during last summer the Football Rules Committee drafted a new code of rules for this present season. "The changes adopted were revolutionary in ha-m-tin- and calculated to minimise greatly the danger of fatal accidents which existed under the old rules.