FOOTBALL “BARRACKERS.”

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 5947, 10 July 1906, Page 4

FOOTBALL “BARRACKERS.”

Tho disgraceful ruffianism of tho Melrose “barraekers” at Saturday’s football match requires no stronger condemnation in tho minds of decent citizens than the mere chronicling of it, and we hope that the Rugby Union, will use every endeavour to sheet home their offence to some of the ringleaders. Threatened from within by foul players : and from without by blackguardly “followers of the game,” it is little wonder that football is sinking very low in the estimation of many decent people. In spite of all the efforts of the authorities, ‘the Rugby rough” continues to furnish nearly every week tho plainest evidence that none of tho methods hitherto adopted to restrain his brutality has the smallest hope of over becoming entirely effective. Sincere the authorities may be, but sensible they can never be considered until they com-

mit themselves to the principle that perpetual disqualification should bo tho penalty for every well-established piece of brutality that calls for punishment at all.

Tho coarse “rough” amongst the spectators is admittedly harder to touch. His existence is intimately related to tho existence of a foul and unsportsmanlike spirit amongst a section of tho men who play football. Tho game can novel- ho anything hut s- rough one, full of possibilities of physical injury; hut most games that are worth playing involve a risk to Ido and limb, and it is nothing against football that it is infinitely more perilous than golf or croquet. Mere roughness, however, if qualified by :n accompanying sportsmanlike temper, is very unlikely to create ruffianly and debased impulses in its spectators. Tho low follows who bulk so largely in the ranks of the sup-, jjorters of the Melrose team are the direct product of tho ruffianly intentions with which some of their friends lake the field. Like attracts like in a very notable fashion in the football world, and those teams which are eminent for their cieap and sportsmanlike methods are invariably eminent also for tho good spirit of their supporters. A football team, in brief, merits exactly tho class of admirers which it attracts. Tho root of tho trouble, however, has gone much deeper than its point of origin, and tho degeneration of tho spectator is tho natural outcome of the increasing tendency to “look on,” and let other men play. It has been prophesied again and again that several of the Anglo-Saxon's outdoor sports will in a very short time bo extinct as sports, and will survive only as special professions. International cricket has become a business in Australia already, and in Great Britain Association football retains only the name of sport without its essential spirit. . That has Med long ago. Tho menace of the looker-on. however, has a wider portent than tho destruction of tho sporting spirit. It threatens tho national hfo. A man of tho athletic ago, and with the athletic equipment, should cither ho an actor or ho should take uo interest in the game at all. Those roughs who woro concerned in Saturday's disgraceful episode doubtless consider themselves sportsmen, but they are not sportsmen in any sense. They are tho odious parasites who aro endangering an excellent outdoor pastime, and, in a measure that is real although microscopic, dragging back the nation in its virile development. Wo have digressed from tho main point, which is tho obligation upon the Rugby Union to do its utmost to punish a gross offence; hut the reflections which Saturday’s incident have inspired are inevitable to the observer* who sees in tho retrogression of football manners something more than evidence of a too lax conservation of the high traditions of tho game.