The side certainly tried hard, and Simonds did his best, but all the same, on the day of the match, Buller's were backing their chances of running up a score of over thirty points at three to one.
"The swine!" said Gordon. "Swanking it about how they are going to lick us to bits. My word, I would give something to smash them to smithereens. I have taken on a bet with every man in Buller's whom I found offering long odds. I stand to win quite a lot. And I shall win it."
"God's truth," said Mansell, "do they think there's no guts left in the House at all? They may go gassing about the number of Colts' badges they have got, but they are not used to our way of playing. We go for the ball, and if a man's in the light we knock him out of it. School House footer is not pretty to look at; but it's the real thing, not a sort of nursery affair. We go in to win."
Just before lunch a typical telegram from Meredith was pinned up on the House board:
"Go it House. And give them ——"
The blank was left to the imagination. The House remembered Meredith and filled it in accordingly.
Nothing is more horrible than the morning before a first House match. Gordon woke happy and expectant, but by break he had begun to feel a little shivery, and at lunch-time he was done to the world. He ate nothing, answered questions in vague monosyllables, and smiled half nervously at everyone in general. He was suffering from the worst kind of stage fright. And after all, to play in an important match before the whole school is a fairly terrifying experience. As he sat trembling in the pavilion, waiting for the whistle to blow, Gordon would have welcomed any form of death, anything to save him from the ordeal before him. The whistle blew at last. As he walked out from the pavilion in his magenta-and-black jersey, an unspeakable terror gripped him; his knees became very weak; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and then something seemed to snap in his brain. He walked on quite cheerfully. He was as a spectator. It seemed that it was not really he, but his ghost that was walking on to the field. Subconsciously he lined up with the rest. The School side in their white jerseys, the Colts with their red dragons, seemed miles away. Collins kicked off. Gordon did not know he was playing. A roar of "House" rose from the touch-line. Involuntarily he joined it, thinking himself a looker-on, then suddenly Livingstone, the Buller's inside three-quarter, caught the ball and ran towards him. At once Gordon was himself. He forgot the crowd on the touch-line, forgot his nervousness, forgot everything except that he was playing for the House, and somehow or other had to drive the ball over that line. He crashed into Livingstone, and the pair rolled into touch. A cheer rippled down the line. Gordon did not hear it.
The Fernhurstian described this match as "perhaps the finest ever witnessed on the School ground," and the reporter was not far wrong. Certainly that first mad rush of the House forwards was the most glorious moment in Gordon's football career. It was all so unexpected, so essentially wonderful. On the touch-line Mansell shouted himself hoarse. The cries of "House" completely drowned those of "School." For the first quarter of an hour the School pack never got the ball out of their half. It seemed that the House must score. Time after time, the School were forced to touch down. Stewart was brought down just the wrong side of the line. Lovelace performed prodigies of valour. A gloom descended over Buller's. On the Masters' side of the line "the Bull" fumed and ground his teeth: "Go low, Reice, you stinking little funk. Get round, forwards, and shove; you are slacking, the lot of you. Buck up, Philson." Up and down he stamped, cursing at his men. Lovelace could hardly refrain from laughing.
"Now, lads," shouted Stewart, "fair or foul; shove the ball over the line!" Like a sledge-hammer Gordon crashed into the scrum. Wilkinson was in his light, but Gordon was seeing red, his feet stamped on Wilkinson, and found the ball. His elbows swung viciously, as he cut his way through the scrum. Then someone caught him by the ankle. He went down hard. A boot caught him on the side of the head. He got up blind with wrath. "Fight! Fight!" he yelled. The House grovel swarmed in; the outhouse pack shivered for a moment, then gave way. Collins and Gordon burst through, the ball at their toes; Wilkinson dashed across and dived for the ball; he clawed it for a second, Gordon's feet smashed it from his hands, and Collins steered it past the back, and kicked it just over the line and fell on top of it.
From the touch-line there burst a roar that must have been heard five miles away. "Well done, laddie!" bawled Mansell. Even Ferguson waved his stick in the air. It was a great moment.