Rough Rugby.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 14042, 28 October 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

Rough Rugby.

MELBOURNE AT FAULT. The "Argus," rationally reviewing the last football season, 6aid: — -Old footabllers, as the correspondence recently published in "The Argus" shows, have come to Melbourne for the semi-final matches in the League contest, hoping to enjoy _ a display of the speed and skill which the game has now developed; and these spectators have gone home disgusted with the toughness, the brutality, and the malignity by which the attractiveness of football is being destroyed. In spite of the fart that 35,000 to 45,000 people have thronged the Melbourne Cricket-ground during the past three weeks, the general public feels the same disgust. All the chibs of the League have had a. successful season from a monetary point of view; Ihey have netted big "gates," and will exhibit swollen balance-sheets, but none the less the degradation of the game is being more and more resented, and if the governing bodies of football permit this degradation to be continued through successive seasons, then neither the universal half-holi-day nor the people's love of athletic sport will prevent football permanently losing its place in public esteem. If those who control the game cannot keep it clean for sport's own sake, and we are not to be influenced except by questions of gate-money, then even for the feake of that gate-money they ought to be careful that their patrons are not sickened by the way in which * large number of the players behave on the field to-day. _ Almost every visitor to football matches now asks the same question — Why has the League not suppressed das growing brutality? There are certain players whose conduct on the field is a disgrace to the game. Regular visitors to the games know these men; could name them ,one by one, ■with the clubs to which they belong. The plavers know them. The umpires know them, and not infrequently go thmtieh t*e farcical and useless proceeding of "cautioning" them. The committees know them, unless the committees are ignorant .and trarhlind. The LeagUß knows them, unless the League is similarly duTl-witted. Thev are the players who deal foul blows, who- viciously assault ?n opponentWhen he gets the better of them: and •fiiefe are some of them with evil renufatious as wide as the interest in football. V Such men should be aWTntelv dismissed _from the game; but the League continue-? to sunino wrangling or its secret deliberat'ons. doinT nothing to tranish tne=e flaeran + - offWiiaefs-: -while the pnblic n«k«. "vTbv? \SjjT?-,Wby? The Tviiular belief is thnt each.-club mth> League fears to protviiw"VlrnrMp ' action, fr- fi»<»i- "i"» " T its-own .players mny be the next to he banished: which is a bad enough motive, -though worse influence* be imagined. .-' .- . The tainted player* j>T6 -infecting the teams. Manv of them are ponnlarlv th"ugH to b» di«trtmeS professionals: if that b* so. theVare merplv p.->in braros. lit+lo hottest (for all their skill in football} any othej hired bnlly: and it is a <*»«- grace to renutnble suortsmei to h'"re tfiem for tlroir foul work. One vigorous fcnrst of oluck on the part of the League would end the disgrace.