ON THE BALL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2929, 4 May 1910, Page 88

ON THE BALL.

IN VARIOUS WAYS. THE GAMES OF ANTIQUITY. B;r Leo Fanning. Football is a game—sometimes. Football is a liberal education. It conveys impressions which last till the new skin grows, and, oft-times, longer. The Sayings of Poor Forrard. Rugby football consists chiefly of two kinds—playing and barracking. The players kick "at the ball, and the barraekers bawl at the kick. The object of the Rugby game is to kick and handle the ball in certain directions—when the referee is looking A saying attributed to Confucius—" A son shall ■ not kick his father^" —may be quoted to prove that the ancient Chinese played football, but much other evidence can be advanced to demonstrate that the game flourished long before the Great Wall was built, and long before the Pharaohs ruled by the Nile. A quantity of circumstantial evidence may be cited to show that football was played in the days when the ichthyosaurus, the plesiosaurus, the pterodactyls, and other children's pets ranged abroad. It is 'admitted that the sportsmen of those picturesque times had no inflated ball for their tourneys, but scientists say that they scored points and crossed lines with . stones. One may pass to ancient Greece, and sigh a moment ever the noble Spartan team which lost against the Persians at Thermopylae, whea Leonidas held the pass too long; and one may argue for many ] weeks whether the Greek phalanx or the Roman " tortoLse " (which the frontrankers formed by locking their oblong shields together over their heads in the ruck) was the origin of the modern scrummage formation. This " tortoise " and the fact that the legionaries wore metal : shin-pads are the only evidence to connect the old Romans with football proper. Was Mahomet a referee or chairman of a union? It is recorded that he read his rule-bookj through a pair of stone spectacles. Turning to England, it seems that football had its ardent devotees among the ancient Britons. The Knights of the Round Table were famous for their rushes, and Tennyson, in beautiful lines, describes the " Passing of Arthur." And what of Lochiel? In what manner of battle did he perish in his pride? When the Wizard, before the match, said to him: — Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn. Did not Lochiel retore: — : Lochiel. ._ . . i Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low, i With his back to the field and bis feet to the foe. ! Any wide-ranging reader may note the influence of football on all literatures, and easily gather information about its marking effects on the inhabitants. j Time was when football was no more ; respectable than bowling (the parent of the i modern green variety), which was solemnly I forbidden by statute in 1388 and in later j years, but to-day a bishop may play Association (if not Rugby) without forfeiting his gaiters or losing his apron. The world grows more giddy, more tolerant with age. Even bank-managers may be seen among the spectators to-day, and the Governor's wife may exclaim, " Go it, Blacks!" withI out serious damage to her respectability. j The world, happily fo.' the footballer, j changes its opinion. The ancient footbalj ler was abcut as much revered as the J modern " bottle-oh," but to-day bright I eyes rightly beam for him, and fair hands ! may proffer him te.a at half-time, and tender hearts and soft voices may have t pity for his black eye or tattered ear. j Shakespeare and Kipling —or Kipling ] and Shakespeare.—have expressed some I contempt of footballers, but if Shakespeare, after all, did not write his own plays the footballers may pardon him; and Kipling has half-confessed that he did not mean what he seemed to say about the "muddied oaf at the goal." ! The sort of football which Shakespeare ' held in small repute was the communal game, in which one street or village played one another up hill and down dale, in a free-and-easy -encounter involving much I breaking of pates and general bruising. I The nearest approach to that unruly sport I —though much less disastrous to life and | limb—was the game which many New Zealand fathers of families played at school here many years ago. One may well regret that the quizzing eye of Samuel Pepys, which overlooked nothing in all the romp of life about did not leave a description of t>he

helter-skelter, sacks-on-the-mill football which Shakespeare abhorred. In all the diary there is only one mention of football—one meagre scrap for the whetted appetite. It is this: January 2, 1664 — " Streets full of footballs, there being a great frost." Did the butcher-boy lead a forward rush with a basket of mutton balanced on his head? Did the muffin man forsake his steaming barrow to do a bit of dribbling on the icy cobbles? Did maids and matrons take a hand —as an Irishman might say—dn the giddy foot-warming in those gay days of London Town? Perhaps Pepys was jostled in one of the scrimmages, and therefore dismissed football with a brevity designed to be contemptuous. It is impossible otherwise to understand how Pepys could so cavalierly dispose of football and at the same time glorify such a trifle as his " perriwigg" thus: "To church, where I found that my coming in a perriwigg did not prove so strange as I was afraid lit would, for I thought all the church would presently have cast their eyes all upon me, but'l found no such thing." An old authority says with quaint seriousness: " One of the best features of football, ancient or modern, is that it may be played by any number irrespective of age or size." Such a remark is very comforting. It is a genial challenge to the alleged elderly to go out and prove that a man is no older than he feels. Why should the thrill of the low tackle be monopolised by mere striplings'? Why should not the well-rounded leg of opulent age flash below the knickerbockers? Why should the venerable be condemned more or less solely to the golf links in the nipping winter days? Think of the exploits of Lewis Carroll's " Old Father William," and the feats of Gilbert's Bishop of Rum-ti-Foo, who took startling lessons from the dancing man: We now proceed to something new— Dance as the Paynes and Lauris do, Like this —one, two—one, two—one, two. The Bishop, never proud, But in an overwhelming heat (His name was Peter, I repeat), Performed the Payne and Lauri feat, And puffed his thanks aloud. Ponder over the possibilities. New Zealand's legislative session, for example, could be httingly closed with a real, football match instead of an insipid " mock Parliament." Mr Massey and 'Sir Joseph, as opposing wing forwards, could have many a good-humoured encounter when the referee was discreetly blind. Mr Carroll, as a wing three-quarter marking Mr James Allen or Mr Herdmain, might see chances to wipe out all the old taihoa scores. But it is much to be feared that all would soon invoke the Statute of Limitations to declare the ball dead in perpetuity. . . ....... This talk is out of touch with thoughts that press. The miind is forced from fancy to fact, back to boyhood's game, which was played with two rules and a tussock. These rules were: (1) Held —a scrum; (2) you can collar a man offside. (The "off-side" referring to the tackier.) In those rollicking days the youngsters were not so well found as to-day's generation in " appointments " for play. Blessed was the horde that could get some rags tied together for a tussle or wheedle a bladder from a friendly butcher. Those dreadful bladders, that flew about the streets to the sore distress of the well-attired adult, suddenly smitten on face or neck, or the bosom, were fiercely execrated by the " Pro Bono Publico " and " Constant Subscriber " of a day that seems ever so far back. But only the lordly could command a bladder: The lowly had to be content with a tussock, and what arguments and fights there were when the grass parted ! Fists were invoked to decide which fragment was the " ball." All pined for the glamour of a coloured jersey, and how thrilling was the first feel of the long-coveted wool? How much better than a soulless shirt, or a bit of string, rope,.or flax tied around the middle of a much-assaulted coat ? Many a father to-day, chiding an irrepressible son for an alleged over-fondness for football, can well remember the stripes that were his portion when he returned home with half a sleeve missing from his coat or a shirt and braces showing compound fractures. His defence was that a jersey—a jersey with nice stripes—would save the wrack and Tuin of buttons and the general dislocation of his school raiment.

They were very ardent hero-worship-pers. The names of the famous footballers were much better known than the list of English sovereigns in the history primers, and the youngsters knew more about the interprovincial matches than the clash of mighty armies at Hastings, Crecy, Agincourt, or Waterloo. After the school days came the matches with a real ball, and the days of excursions in carts and drags, with aweinspiring banners and terrorising warcries. Was it not good to sing the old choruses, over and over, on the run home after a win ? How we talked it all over in the cart in the intervals of the raucous choruses? How we thought that the town was excited about our defeat of the Buccaneers 111 or the Pirates IV, and how we thought everybody was lending us admiring ears and eyes! Pretty days of thrill! Splendid happiness of innocent vanity! And all the time "Pro Bono Publico" was comparing us very unfavourably with the types of his boyhood, and was thinking of horrible things to write about us. We have our comfort now. The present cart-loads are catching- their share of the acid.