THE TWELFTH MAN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18643, 21 December 1928, Page 12

THE TWELFTH MAN.

The time to try your hardest is when the luck is against you. If there is one lesson sport teaches a man for the larger game of life, it is this (says a writer in a London journal). There are days in sport when only sheer bad luck, repeated manv times, robs a man of the reward of endeavour. The bowler rattles the stumps without dislodging the bails; the fieldsmen, one after the other, miss “ sitters.” Brilliant strokes in tennis just go out. In football the goal bears a charmed life. It is on these days that the will to win forsakes the temperamental player. But it is a run of bad luck which pulls out the reserves in the big player. Bad luck is to him just another opponent to beat—the Twelfth Man. And No. 12, being the toughest on the side, calls forth a correspondingly bigger effort. When Fate is “ unkind,” when all our best attempts just miss because of accidents, then is the time to tighten our belt and make our biggest effort. To rail against Luck, to sit down under the bludgeonings of Chance, is a confession of weakness. And Bad Luck, that Twelfth Man, is very like the rest of the side. It will give wav if you are only determined enough.