AMERICAN FOOTBALL.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12896, 6 February 1906, Page 3

AMERICAN FOOTBALL.

Master Roosevelt, having had his nose broken, Mr Roosevelt has with presidential and parental eloquence denounced American football as brutal, and Columbia University -has decided to drop such a cripple-, making sport out of its educational curriculum. *

'From such portentoHs sign's a very pretty agitation against football seems to be shaping tin the States; but it is doubtful if the movement Trill go far. Even the tlltinder from White House did not prevent 40,000 of America's elite, which included judges, Senators, millionaires, and society damsels, from, shouting themselves hoarse at the Yale-Harvard, which for strenuousness is the apotheosis of the American game.

And even with the casualty list before one's startled eyes it would in reality ba unfair do judge American football from the English standard. ' To begin with, i not even an Irish international, could survive tea minutes at the American game. At this'the British player may curl up a scornful lip, but bnef experience of the American scrum would convince one of the. fact. The whole system of American sport is utterly to a British idea. The, American' Tores a game -characteristic of his nation's .hurricane like and pitiless energy. In England, the football season ambles along-Jar. -five months* _ \*ln"* the States it is but of sir weeks* duration. And that is the very liihit of human endurance.

It is <the college teams, .of course, wliicli count, and the training of them is a vast financial undertaking, coupled with the severest phj-steal conditions that man has yet devised for''sport-. When the trial games are over, and the team lines up for the match, the men are pretty hard to kill. Otherwise the death rate would be higher. The men are as hard as prizefighters. Their muscles are so trained that- a blow which would slay an average man simply bounces off them. Not thaC hitting is officially allowed. Though the teams number only eleven men, the theory underlying the American : game is the Rugby one. That is about all one can say of it. According to this season's rules, there are six men in the "line," and.four players iat the back of them. When they "line np, the men all crouch like sprinters about to run. And they crouch as close as they can get to the ground all through the game. It is a life-saving precaution. The " centre" who has won the toss holds the ball between his legs. Then he throws it through them to the man behind him. The man starts away, and in a minute an avalanche of fierce humanity has dragged him down. There are few" runs and little passing. The tackling is toe. unerring, too deadly. The field is divided into chequers, each five yards square. If in three attempts a team can push and struggle with the Kill five yards fotward. they nr-; well.

If a nrm cciv.js for you. you can let h:m run his face a tr-first your open palm at the end of a stiffly outstretched arm.

Only the astounding muscles «>n ?3ic back of his neck can save him irt.ni a spine. Sometime!! when tb<* I.kc •>nivcw, it finds the hand clenched and driving power behind it.

Or if a man is known to Im-e a hurt shoulder, it is the correct ihin:; tt» <ic\atc every effort to making that shoulder won«e. Again, if a man has had his he-«i it is a good thing to batter it more. is a fairly easy thing for a ki.ee U» <!,.» in a " scrum/'

On the lines wait the stretcher prunes, the doctors, and the suhsiitntcs. A '.cam can play a hundred substitutes, lint it- is reckoned not to pay. A substitute i* nearly always a long way a, in the team, and it is commonly ' c'd a team man can play belle: • .-.u Jr<"

dead than a substitute wholly .iu •. Meantime the Senators, the the judges, the millionaires, and the girls with flushed faces, disordered hair, and flags in their vehement hands, have yelled themselves pretty well inso a state of collapse. In the American breast the gladiatorial spirit is strong.

And the "cheering sections'* keen that spirit at fever heat. These " cheering sections," hundreds strong, are led by ajen with megaphones.