II
Not very many days afterwards the walls of Bursley sharply called attention, by small blue and red posters (blue and red being the historic colours of the Bursley Football Club), to a public meeting which was to be held in the Town Hall, under the presidency of the Mayor, to consider what steps could be taken to secure the future of the Bursley Football Club.
There were two "great" football clubs in the Five Towns—Knype, one of the oldest clubs in England, and Bursley. Both were in the League, though Knype was in the first division while Bursley was only in the second. Both were, in fact, limited companies, engaged as much in the pursuit of dividends as in the practice of the one ancient and glorious sport which appeals to the reason and the heart of England. (Neither ever paid a dividend.) Both employed professionals, who, by a strange chance, were nearly all born in Scotland; and both also employed trainers who before an important match took the teams off to a hydropathic establishment far, far distant from any public-house. (This was called "training.") Now, whereas the Knype Club was struggling along fairly well, the Bursley Club had come to the end of its resources. The great football public had practically deserted it. The explanation, of course, was that Bursley had been losing too many matches. The great football public had no use for anything but victories. It would treat its players like gods—so long as they won. But when they happened to lose, the great football public simply sulked. It did not kick a man that was down; it merely ignored him, well knowing that the man could not get up without help. It cared nothing whatever for fidelity, municipal patriotism, fair play, the chances of war, or dividends on capital. If it could see victories it would pay sixpence, but it would not pay sixpence to assist at defeats.
Still, when at a special general meeting of the Bursley Football Club, Limited, held at the registered offices, the Coffee House, Bursley, Councillor Barlow, J. P., chairman of the company since the creation of the League, announced that the directors had reluctantly come to the conclusion that they could not conscientiously embark on the dangerous risks of the approaching season, and that it was the intention of the directors to wind up the Club, in default of adequate public interest—when Bursley read this in the Signal, the town was certainly shocked. Was the famous club, then, to disappear for ever, and the football ground to be sold in plots and the grandstand for firewood? The shock was so severe that the death of Alderman Bloor (none the less a mighty figure in Bursley) passed as a minor event.
Hence the advertisement of the meeting in the Town Hall caused joy and hope, and people said to themselves, "Something's bound to be done; the old Club can't go out like that." And everybody grew quite sentimental. And although nothing is supposed to be capable of filling Bursley Town Hall except a political meeting and an old folks' treat, Bursley Town Hall was as near full as made no matter for the football question. Many men had cheerfully sacrificed a game of billiards and a glass of beer in order to attend it.
The Mayor, in the chair, was a mild old gentleman who knew nothing whatever about football and had probably never seen a football match; but it was essential that the meeting should have august patronage, and so the Mayor had been trapped and tamed. On the mere fact that he paid an annual subscription to the golf club certain parties built up the legend that he was a true sportsman with the true interests of sport in his soul.
He uttered a few phrases such as "the manly game," "old associations," "bound up with the history of England," "splendid fellows," "indomitable pluck," "dogged by misfortune" (indeed, he produced quite an impression on the rude and grim audience), and then he called upon Councillor Barlow to make a statement.
Councillor Barlow, on the Mayor's right, was a different kind of man from the Mayor. He was fifty and iron-grey, with whiskers, but no moustache; short, stoutish, raspish.
He said nothing about manliness, pluck, history, or auld lang syne.
He said he had given his services as chairman to the Football Club for thirteen years; that he had taken up £2000 worth of shares in the company; and that, as at that moment the company's liabilities would exactly absorb its assets, his £2000 was worth exactly nothing. "You may say," he said, "I've lost that £2000 in thirteen years. That is, it's the same as if I 'd been steadily paying three pun' a week out of my own pocket to provide football matches that you chaps would n't take the trouble to go and see. That's the straight of it! What have I got for my pains? Nothing but worries, and these!" (He pointed to his grey hairs.) "And I 'm not alone; there's others; and now I have to come and defend myself at a public meeting. I 'm supposed not to have the best interests of football at heart. Me and my co-directors," he proceeded, with even a rougher raspishness, "have warned the town again and again what would happen if the matches weren't better patronised. And now it's happened, and now it's too late, you want to do something! You can't! It's too late. There 's only one thing the matter with first-class football in Bursley," he concluded, "and it is n't the players. It's the public—it's yourselves. You 're the most craven lot of tomfools that ever a big football club had to do with. When we lose a match, what do you do? Do you come and encourage us next time? No, you stop away, and leave us fifty or sixty pound out of pocket on a match, just to teach us better! Do you expect us to win every match? Why, Preston North End itself—" here he spoke solemnly, of heroes—"Preston North End itself in its great days did n't win every match—it lost to Accrington. But did the Preston public desert it? No! You—you have n't got the pluck of a louse, nor the faithfulness of a cat. You 've starved your Football Club to death, and now you call a meeting to weep and grumble. And you have the insolence to write letters to the Signal about bad management, forsooth! If anybody in the hall thinks he can manage this Club better than me and my co-directors have done, I may say that we hold a majority of the shares, and we 'll part with the whole show to any clever person or persons who care to take it off our hands at a bargain price. That's talking."