FOOTBALL BUILDS CHARACTER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23333, 29 April 1939, Page 11 (Supplement)

FOOTBALL BUILDS CHARACTER

"WELL, fellows, in another couple of minutes you'll be out there on the field'engaged in another football game. There really isn't much I need to say to you. You're a fine bunch of boys, an intelligent bunch of boys. I won't insult, you by tellinjj..you that the fate of the world depends on'this encounter. I know you all feel as I do, that football is a game played for the enjoyment of the participants, not a form of warfare. - "'And I know j'ou are all intelligent enough to know that in the years to come, the score of this game won't natter. What will matter is whether

you conducted yourselves like gentlemen out there, whether you gave your opponents every fair courtesy and consideration, or whether you acted like a bunch of muckers "[ don't want to sound sentimental, but I'd like every spectator who watches this contest to go away saying not: 'What a wonderful football team!" but 'What a fine gentlemanly group of young men!' That's a tribute that I'd carry in my heart to my*dying day. And that's what's going to happen—if I know you fellows. "Yes, boys, it isn't how the game comes out, but how you play the game that counts. It's the same way in the

far more important battle of life, and that is what you fellows are being trained for —to take the shocks, thu injustices, the tough breaks of life without flinching. To staml up lilt" men and do your best, and do it with a smile. Never to take advantage of anyone. And that's the way you'll all go through life —if I know you fellows.. "Well, 1/guess that's all—. What's that, O'Houi/ce? . . How are you going to stop McTeagle, their All-American halfback? Well, f think there's a pretty good chance that he won't he in the game for mote than three o; 1 four plays —if I know ,7011 fellows." —Parke Cummings, in the Saturday Evening Post.