Foot-ball

by Montague Shearman; James Edmund Vincent

But independently of these extracts, there are many allusions through Scott’s works which testify to the acknowledged popularity of football in Scotland in the lifetime of the great novelist.

Perhaps we cannot do better than conclude our account of the football of the past before the days of the Rugby Union and Association rules by referring to the ancient game which is still played at Derby on Shrove Tuesday at the present, though perhaps played with less zest since the lusty youths of the city have had plenty of opportunities of enjoying the game to the top of their bent on other occasions, and since too we live in an age which has more respect for the privileges and feelings of peaceable householders than its predecessors. At Derby there has been from time immemorial a match at football on Shrove Tuesday, between the rival parishes of All Saints and St. Peter. The game is started in the market-place, and the St. Peter’s goal is a gate some miles away, while the wheel of a water-mill, distant about as far, is the goal of the All Saints’ division; and the game is over when the ball has been taken to either goal. Rules of the game there are none; and all that is needed is for one party, by force or by stratagem, to get the ball up to the adversary’s goal; to effect which object, détours are made round streets and alleys, and the river often crossed by swimming with the ball. Here indeed is a survival of one of the ancient sports of merrie England, where blows are given and taken in good humour, and “all is good play, and never attorney or coroner troubled for the matter.” Nor is Derby by any means the only place where such a game is still played. In the Midlands, the North, the South, and the West it survives in holes and corners of old England; and although we who have learnt the game of football in other days may prefer a good match with picked sides on the regulation field of play and under organized rules, yet we should regard with veneration the more simple sport from which has been derived the more elaborate game which it was our delight to play in youth, and which it may be our delight to watch in old age. We must reserve for another chapter the important task of showing how, issuing from its home in the public schools, where it had for generations found a welcome shelter, the game of football has developed once more in our days into a national sport.

CHAPTER IV.
History of Football in the Public Schools.

IT is vastly to the credit of cricket and of football that they should have survived the Puritan deluge and the decay of the athletic spirit at the end of the last century, and not have been laid in limbo together with stoolball, cambuc, and other games wherein the hearts of our forefathers rejoiced. The survival indicates an exceeding fitness. Still the storm of Puritanical hatred had been enough to kill even hardier plants than these, unless there had been some quiet haunts in which they existed unnoticed and unmolested. As to the pastimes of the ’prentice boys they perished; but in the quiet privacy of the country and in the almost monastic seclusion of some of our ancient public schools they continued to exist.

For some reason or other, the foundation of Laurence Sheriff, at Rugby, was the locality in which, what we now call the Rugby game, but which, for reasons above mentioned, appears in reality to have been the pristine form of the game, was preserved. Now, since of every effect there is a cause, and since of this particular effect history supplies no cause that we are aware of, it becomes necessary to have recourse to conjecture; and since conjecture, to be probable, must proceed upon some sound basis, it seems to follow, that in order to discover why the game, distinguished by an absence of rules, survived in Rugby School, an inquiry should be made whether the conditions of football at Rugby were not different from what they were elsewhere. The answer to this question, once formulated, is manifest. The conditions of football were different at Rugby from those which prevailed at other schools; or rather, to put the matter in language paradoxical in appearance but literally correct, the conditions of the game were normal at Rugby and abnormal everywhere else. In fact, the original form of football,—for it is the simplest,—is of such a nature that it can hardly be played except in a wide open space. Such a space existed at Rugby from the beginning, but not at the other great public schools. The Eton boys had originally no other place to disport themselves in than the comparatively small inner field nearest the College buildings. The ancient Meads of the Winchester College are small in dimensions. At the Charterhouse they had originally no other playground than the cloisters; and though at Westminster the scholars were better provided for, yet they were confined to “Green.” Now, in small spaces of this kind it is obvious that the continual playing of football throughout the winter months must, almost of necessity, have resulted in the ruin of the playground for other purposes. For football is essentially a game for the many, and not for the few, and by its very nature involves the tearing up of turf and the ruin of greenswards. Therefore it was natural that in each particular school the rules of the game should be settled by the capacities of the playground; and, as these were infinitely various in character, so were the games various.

It is proposed to examine the games of the various schools in somewhat close detail, on the ground, in the first place, that they are interesting in themselves, and, in the second, that in some of them at least are to be traced, more or less distinctly, the germs of the Association game.

The most peculiar of all games of football is that which is practised at Winchester, and which, in defiance of latter-day opinions, still continues to flourish in almost its pristine form. Of the peculiar rules in vogue at Winchester College, it cannot be written that they are in any way concerned with the principles of the Association game. On the contrary, they differ altogether from those of any other game. But the Winchester rules have the literary merit of peculiarity, and this practical virtue, that they have produced many of the first Association players of the present and past days. Therefore, although no one is recommended to submit himself to them if he can avoid it, which he will not be able to do if he goes to the ancient school as a pupil, they are rules worthy of some notice. The ground upon which the Winchester boys play, is about 80 yards long and about 25 yards wide. Thus, in the College Meads, which are more or less square, with an irregular excrescence upon the side nearest the College, it was possible for four games to be played simultaneously, while the central portion was reserved for the more sacred and elaborate game of cricket. Inasmuch, however, as there was some natural difficulty in keeping the ball within the prescribed limits for even a reasonable time, the ancient custom was first to mark out the ground with stakes and ropes, and then, outside the ropes, to place a line of shivering fags. In time humanity and genius combined discovered that hurdles served the purpose quite as well as small boys, and did not take cold; and in later days the hurdles themselves have given place to tarred nets, spread out upon an iron framework some ten feet in height. The ropes still remain and are placed about a yard from the netting; and further, seeing that the ball, while it is “under ropes,” is in a certain spurious kind of way in play, these same ropes exert a serious influence upon the game. This commences with a “hot,” which is formed in the following fashion: In “sixes,” that is to say matches with six players on each side, there are two backs on each side, who are called “behinds,” and four forwards, who go by the name of “ups.” Of the forwards one is “over the ball” and takes the centre place, and two back him up with their knees behind his and their arms interlaced round his body. All three keep their heads down, and the fourth, with his back and shoulders, propels the centre man. In a six game, notwithstanding the closeness of the phalanx thus formed, the duration of a “hot” is not usually long; but in fifteens, where the mass of players is far greater and the same principle is observed in the formation of the “hot,” ten minutes or more may be occupied in this performance. When it is added that the performance is deliberately repeated every time the ball is kicked over the netting, and that there is no other penalty than a “hot” for any infringement of the rules, it may be imagined that “hots” occupy the greater part of the hour which is devoted to a match. The ball, however, is not kicked out as often as might be supposed probable, for one of the most stringent rules of the game is, that it may not be kicked higher than five feet, which is supposed to be the average height of a man’s shoulder, unless, at the time when it is kicked, it is either bounding or rolling at a distinctly fast pace; nor may it be kicked up unless the last person to touch it was an opponent, for, in the contrary case, it is a “made flier,” which is dreadful. This is a rule which causes almost as many hots by being infringed as it saves by preventing the behinds, who alone do much in the way of kicking, from driving the ball over the netting. Still it is a necessary rule, for the goal consists of the whole twenty-five yards or thereabouts, that is to say, of the whole width of the arena, and but for the rule concerning “kicking up,” there would be no end to the number of goals obtained. It should be mentioned, however, that if a ball, before passing over the goal line, or, as it is called, “Worms,” is touched ever so slightly by any member of what Strutt would call the defending party, no goal is scored. The distinguishing features of the game, apart from those already mentioned, are, in the first place, that no dribbling is permitted under any circumstances; and in the second place, that the “off-side” rule is stricter than in any other game. It is not legitimate for two players on the same side to touch the ball in succession, unless it rolls behind the first kicker; nor may one player “back up his partner’s kick” by charging the adversary, unless, at the time when his partner kicked, he was behind the ball, or, since that time, has returned to the place from which the ball was kicked. It should be added, that the ball, which is several ounces heavier than an Association ball, is round. When caught upon a full volley kicked by one of the opposite side, it is “punted” and not “dropped;” but if the person catching it is charged, then he who charges is said to be “running him” and may “collar” him as at the Rugby game, and the holder of the ball may run until his adversaries cease to “run him,” but then he must halt and take his punt.