My son held that brain as well as muscle was needed in athletics. "Rugby football," he wrote, "tends more and more to become an ideal combination of scientific actions. Haphazard, clumsy battering is useless. Your footballer has to be a thinking and a reasoning factor." He believed that games properly played are invaluable as a training in character. "They make," he wrote, "not only for courage and unselfishness, but also for clean living: a sportsman dare not indulge in excesses."

Nobody could have found greater happiness in a game of football than did Paul Jones. He revelled in a hard-fought match and seemed impervious to knocks and bruises. One of his merits as a captain was that he never lost heart; he would fight doggedly to the last, even against adverse conditions. He knew, too, how to adapt his tactics skilfully to varying conditions of play. It was an intoxicating moment after a victory, for the boys would sweep into the field of play and carry the captain in triumph shoulder-high from the arena. In public-school football no animosities are left, no matter how keenly contested the game. Victor and vanquished dine together after the match, the best of friends, and the home team escort their visitors to the railway station. How well I recollect Paul coming home on Saturday evenings about eight o'clock after a victorious match; his firm, quick step, and the eager joy that shone in his face! His mother and I often watched the games at Dulwich, and he would go over every phase of the play with us, inviting comments and contributing his own. He was always severe in his condemnation of anything in the shape of "gallery play," his constant maxim being that the player should subordinate himself entirely to the side. It was his conviction that unselfishness was stimulated by football. The amateur athlete, who forgot himself in the team of which he was a part, and who played and worked hard for the honour of the game, and without thought of personal advantage or reward, was the god of his idolatry. Fond as he was of sport, and highly as he appreciated it as a discipline for character, he held that the cult of athletics could be overdone, and that to make a business of what should only be a pastime was a grave blunder. In an essay which he wrote on "Sport," he characterises the professional athlete as a man who is engaged "in the vilest of trades." "Life," he wrote, "is made up of varied interests, and man has serious work to do in the world. Excess in sport—or in anything else—puts the notes of the great common chord of life out of harmony."[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER IV
CRICKET

Your cricketer, right English to the core,
Still loves the man best he has licked before.

Tom Taylor in Punch.

Though, as has been said, Paul had no skill in cricket, he was jealous of the cricket reputation of the College. He knew the game thoroughly. His cricket "Bible," if I may use the expression, was Prince Ranjitsinhji's excellent "Jubilee Book of Cricket." He often accompanied the 1st XI for out-of-town matches, to act as scorer or reporter. His cricket reports in The Alleynian make racy reading. The following is taken from a picturesquely-written account of a victory over Brighton at Brighton in May, 1914:

When A. E. R. Gilligan appeared at the wicket things became more than merry. He was in fine fettle, and from the first made light of the bowling, hitting all round the wicket with immense vigour. The gem of the day was his treatment of D. S. Johnson's fifth over. We seem to recollect reading in our childhood a work of P. G. Wodehouse's, in which he remarks that "when a slow bowler begins to bowl fast, it is as well to be batting if you can manage it." Well, Johnson was—we think—originally a slow bowler, and he tried to bowl fast. The result was that traffic had to be suspended on the road running past the school. First Franklin—who had replaced Shirley, brilliantly caught at point—smote Johnson for a three. This brought Gilligan to the batting end, and a horse passing outside the ground nearly had its life cut short. The next ball just missed the railings, and the next almost smashed the fanlight in a house across the road. It was then that the police suspended the traffic. Gilligan finally played inside a good length ball, and was most unfortunately bowled when within two of his century. Hard luck! He had been missed twice—once, we admit, badly—but on the whole his smiting was admirably timed and placed. He hit three sixes and fifteen fours. Franklin had meanwhile been busy, and scored 22, with three fours. Finally, Brown and Wood put on some 30 runs, the former being not out for a useful 16, and the latter getting 13. Our score was 326 for eight when Gilligan declared.

Appended is a passage from his account of the match with Bedford on June 6 (in which Dulwich were victorious by 81 runs), describing a record achievement by A. H. H. Gilligan, one of three brothers who distinguished themselves in athletics in Dulwich:

A. H. H. Gilligan was now well over the 170 mark, and had therefore beaten the previous school record for the highest score. At 190, however, he just touched a short fast ball from Cameron, and put the ball into the hands of Dix at second slip: 283-9-190. The innings closed for 284 in the next over, Paton being run out. To score 190 out of 284 is an almost superhuman performance. For a man who was only playing his second match this season it was a positively marvellous achievement. Gilligan's innings was a masterpiece, and at no time did he seem to be in the slightest degree troubled by the bowlers, yet the latter were distinctly good, as they proved by the fact that they got nine men out for 94 runs or less. Gilligan's innings included a six and thirty-two fours. The previous best score—against a weak scratch side in 1911—was 171 by C. V. Arnold. Gilligan was at the wickets in all only two and a quarter hours or so.

The following is from his report of the Sherborne match, which Dulwich won handsomely: