FOOTBALL.

Timaru Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 2409, 12 June 1882, Page 3

FOOTBALL.

(The Times.) Not one of our national games has met with so much opposition as football ; not one, except, perhaps, lawn-tennis, hat grown bo nmoh m popularity during'.tne last fewyearsi ■ Parents have joined; with the doctor m proscribing it ; it hop been held yp to censure as rough and brutalising. • It would, bo curious to know with what feelings those who join m the chorut of disapproval regard b ports and pastime: infinitely more wasteful of human life, Where football claims ono, thp bathing Beaton and the hunting-field claim a hun dred victims. In spite, however, of protests the giime has made surprising strides ii popular favor. Five-and-twenty yean ago no ono thought of prolonging footbal playing beyond his boyhood.' lt wasagami fit fir boys alone ■;■■ for they alone-' weri sufficiently active, sufficiently sound o wind, sufficiently indifferfent to " hacks,' i tumbles, and collisions with other humai >ibodiM. ■ Now all that ia altered, and it i

recognised that a rob' Ubt mau on this side of thirty has, like a boy, superfluous energy of which he must regularly get rid by vigorous, perhaps violent, oxercise. All forms of athletics are a reaction against the unnerving influences of modern civilisation ; and if football seems to give too ample play to the combativeness inherent m our animal nature, it must be remembered how it also tempers roughness with good-nature and chivalry. We may affirm with safety that nowhere so much as m the football field is the exhibition of personal courage and personal skill so closely united with courtesy and regard for opponents. The main supporter of London football is the young business-man. To a week of work more or less sedentary and monotonous he finds a wholesome corrective m a game which exercises every muscle m his body and souds his blood coursing through hi 3 veins with excitement. Saturday ia tho great day of the week for football players, and a rough calculation would indicate that on every Saturday afternoon during the season from 80,000 to 40,000 men and boys are engaging m the game, of whom nearly one-fourth are players residing m and around London. Proceeding to divide the plnyers into those who play the Association and those who play the Rugby Union rules, it may be conjectured that there are about double as many of the latter as of the former. This superiority of numbers may be Attributed to the larger number of public schools wtich adopt the Rugby Union rules, and, m some degree, perhaps to the greater excitement of the Rugby Union game. If played by two crack teams, indeed, nothing can bo more fascinating to watch than the Association game. The final round of the Association challenge-cup ties, for instance, produces a wonderful exhibition of combined skill, m which the players seem to use their feet with as much natural precision as they would use their hands, reminding us of those painters who, by whim or compulsion of nature, have successfully wielded the brush with their toes instead of their fingers. It is marvellous to watch the fluctuations m such a game. Now the ball is at one end of the field, now at the other. The eleven players are divided into " wings," centres, half-backs and backs. A " wing," selected for that post for hia speed, may have got possession of the ball and dribbled it past his opponents. Having arrived near the goal line, but being, from the nature of his post, some way from the goal, he " middles " it to one of the " centres," who has meanwhilo been running parallel to him. The " centre " attempts to steer between the posts, but he has delayed too long. One of the opposite backs, or, perhaps, the goalkeeper, charges him, and m an instant the ball is flying to another part of the field, whence it travels by dint of repeated " passing" towards the other goal. This " passing '' is, perhaps, the most distinctive feature of the Association play of to-day as compared with that of some ten years back. To bo practised effectively it requires a highly-trained team, and it is the one thing which marks a ii rat-rate Associationeleveti. As there are only a few such players, and a few such teams, an ordinary Association game is a rather tame affair to those who are looking on. The players do not preserve thuir places ; they play selfishly, each for himself, with no method, and present the appearance of a crowd running after a ball with no incidents of interest save that every now and then a point is registered. In Rugby Union football, on the other hand, something is always happening, even m a second-rate match, to rivet tho attention of the spectator. Now that the endless scrimmages of old days have been put an end to by the legislation of the Rugby Union, the gamo is fust and its phases varying. The liberty of using the hands, denied to Association players, breaks tho monotony of unvaried kicking with the feet ; it renders possible the " drop kick," certainly the moat picturesque mode of kicking a football, and makes " punting " of much greater frequency. Then there is the scrimmage, tight and loose, running with the ball, with its incidents of " handing off" and "collaring" besides the "dribbling" which is common to both styles of game. The preference of the ordinary spectator for the Rugby Union rules is shown conclusively if two matches, one under Rugby Union, the other under Association rules, are carried on simultaneously at no great distance from one another — a preference, however, which m ay be sufficiently accounted for. by tho innato desire of man to see his. fellow-creatures sent rolling m the mud by suporior strength and skill. But the sharpest contrast between football as played with the round ball and the same as played with the oval Rugby ball is also m the eyes of outsiders the most serious. However ignorant of modern football, all know that one' game is far " rougher " than the other ; and a soason seldom passes without a crusade being preached against what is called the " brutal " Rugby Union game. It is not so certain that the Rugby Union game, though the rougher, is the more productive of really serious accidents. People here assume that what they conceive ought to be the case is m point of fact the case.- Ie would be futile, however, to dispute that two or three cases of broken bones occur every weak. Considering the number of players, this number is not large ; and tho accidents consist, m three cases out of four, of broken collar-bones, which are, after all, preferable to dislodged knee-caps or sprained ankles. Unfortunately, the series of petty casualties is, though at rare intervals, broken by a fatal accident, such as that which lately happened at Middleton. It may be conceded that outside public opinion has some claim to exercise supervision over the different modes m which people choose to amuse themsolves. For instance, pugilism or duelling for morp sport, if such things were possible, would not be tolerated by public opinion any more than by the law- of the land. But Rugby Union football has not for its object the infliction of injury. Thero are certain risks involved m tho game, and these cannot possibly be got rid of without abolishing Rugby Union football itself., ■ Thero aro signs that this can never be dono by tho criticism of Btaid, timid, or shocked outsiders, and that it can be done by nothing short of legislation. But a "Dangerous Amusement" Act is out of tho question. There is really no distinction of importance between the dangers of football and those of twenty other pastimes. People talk of the ,'," brutality" of the game. The epithet seems to amount to this— that • injuries at football are inflicted, as the ; old Roman lawyers used to say, corpore i corpori, by human body upon human ) body, v, On the other hand, the element of t spite or ovon of intention to cause injury i is conspicuously wanting. As the game is - now played, these injuries are as purely i accidental as a Btumblp at a wire fenoe, i being sucked down by an undertow, or i roceiving the charge of your own or your . friend's giln. In Tom Brown's time at ; (Rugby, we are not sure that the game was - not more or less brutal. • But tho fact is i that the Rugby Union, the legislative i body of . this section of football players, s has : shorn the game of one after anothe: 1 of its cruel characteristics. " Hacking," b " tripping," and mauling m the field of b play have, as the Committee of the >f Union pointed out to tho coroner who " presided at the inquoat on the occasion of a the reoeiit fatal accident at Middles ton, • dUappearqd .altogether ; and the

greatest triumph of the milder code was when, only a few years ago, Rugby School itself abandoned its ancient traditions. If accidents seem now more numerous than of yore, it is because the players are more numerous, and because the game is faster — that is bocause it is stripped of that very ferocity which some impute to it. At any rate, the rules of Rugby Union football have arrived at such a state that they can no longer be ameliorated m the direction of gentleness, without spoiling or perhaps killing the game. It thus becomes a question whother, for every bone broken, there is not a hundred boys and men rendered sounder of wind, limb, and constitution, defter of hand and foot, quicker of eye and prompter of judgment ; m fact, whether the game does not offer overwhelming compensations for the proportionately few casualties it occasions.