On the Ball!

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 170572, 3 August 1921, Page 7

On the Ball!

Not every oue who goes out to the Caledonian Grounds this afternoon will go to study firstclass football. Hundreds will go out of curiosity; hundreds more no doubt from mere mass excitement. But whatever ive go to see, or do actually see, it is worth while recalling- that football is as old as our really intelligible history. It was possibly known to the Greeks, it was probably played by the Romans; but it was certainly indulged in by the earliest Englishmen who emerge from the shadows following' the Danish and Norman invasions. If we cannot say that a playex of those days, if it were possible to resurrect him, would feel very patient under the referee’s whistle this afternoon, lie would not be entirely at fault in a rough-and-tumble near the line. And what we can say is that without ten centuries of ball chasing or kicking or carrying our nation would have been a good deal softer than it is, a good deal duller, a good deal short of present standards of chivalry. It is true that the earlier exhibitions were not good for clothes or scalps or _ even skulls. The game started in the market-place, and the goals be ing at opposite ends of the town, there was a little work for the surgeon (who was the barber) before the day was over v It is to be noted, too, that play lasted as long as there was wind and light, was compulsory (at some periods) for all able-bodied males, and was not particularly good either for the peace of the realm or for the rights of private property. But danger to life and limb, though it caused occasional pious proclamations, had the same effect in general as the north-east wind. It “braced brain and sinew” ana “made hard Englishmen.” But unfortunately, football a few hundred years ago. sometimes had the same effect on society as it has in some centres today. It led to Sabbath-breaking. Because there was no such thing as a half-holiday, and because the , working-day was not the little interruption to pleasure that it threatens now to become, the masses either could not play at all or had to pray and play during the same twenty-four hours. And discussions on that were occasionally a little vehement. Bur in spite of the wrath of kings, who, decreed sometimes that “football and golfe, be utterly cryed down and not to be used,” and the threatened greater wrath to come, the game proved irresistible till the end of the 18th century, and dropped out for a generation only to be revived in more scientific form in the great public schools. We are noj; going to repeat to-day thq disputed phrase about Waterloo and Eton. But we may at least suggest that the ancient “all-in” adventures of Shrove Tuesday .strangely, enough the historic football day —were the beginning, 'if not the end, of that development of “grin and bear it” with which we have struggled through so many tragedies since.