ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 100, 5 June 1900, Page 2

ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL.

TO THB EDITOR. Sib, —May I, as one who is now spending his first winter in New Zetland, ask the sporting section of this district, through the medium of your paper, why the game of Association Football is so little played out hen! At home in the Old Country I was a most enthusiastic player of " " belonging at various times to several of the best clubs in the South of London, etc., and to me it seems a great pity that so interesting a g«ma to players and spectators alike, (vide its popularity in England, especially the .North) should be entirely negleoteda Association football, played properly, is a much better game than the Rugby one, requiring as it does so much mora skill and science than the rough-and-tumble, hurly-burly of Rugby. Far instance, what can be more intftrmting to players and onlookers t.h+ clever combination or dribbling of a smart line of forwards under the Association rules, or the clever tackling of a good back when an opposing forward has the goal almost at his mercy 1 True, it may be said that all this it capable of being done, and is done, in' the Rugby game, but does not a Rugby game usually resolve itself into a series of sorums which, however interesting they may be to those engaged in get decidedly monotonous to the onlooker ? Again, Association, without being any the less manly or spirited, is a much gentler gune, if I can so term it, than rugby. Witness tba game played at a place not a hundred miles from New Plymouth last week, when five of the members of one were more or less seriously injured. Of course, this may be an exception, but still it is a fact, and I think ono might go through the whole annals of association football without finding a parallel case. lam not a " milk-and-water " footballer myself, holding the good old view that a sport without a spice of danger in it is not worth ita salt, but still it strikes one rather forcibly that this is going rather strong. Could not something be done towards forming a Taranaki Association Football Union or something of that sort, or would the difficulties be too great?— I am, etc, " Socceb." New Plymouth, June 2nd.