“Milton got in for us. He barged through out of touch. We’ve been pressing the whole time. Barry got over once, but he was held up. Hullo, they’re beginning again. Buck up, Sey-mour’s.”
His voice cracking on the high note, he took an immense slab of vanilla chocolate as a remedy for hoarseness.
“Who scored for Day’s?” asked Clowes.
“Strachan. Rand-Brown let him through from their twenty-five. You never saw anything so rotten as Rand-Brown. He doesn’t take his passes, and Strachan gets past him every time.”
“Is Strachan playing on the wing?”
Strachan was the first fifteen full-back.
“Yes. They’ve put young Bassett back instead of him. Sey-mour’s. Buck up, Seymour’s. We-ell played! There, did you ever see anything like it?” he broke off disgustedly.
The Seymourite playing centre next to Rand-Brown had run through to the back and passed out to his wing, as a good centre should. It was a perfect pass, except that it came at his head instead of his chest. Nobody with any pretensions to decent play should have missed it. Rand-Brown, however, achieved that feat. The ball struck his hands and bounded forward. The referee blew his whistle for a scrum, and a certain try was lost.
From the scrum the Seymour’s forwards broke away to the goal-line, where they were pulled up by Bassett. The next minute the defence had been pierced, and Drummond was lying on the ball a yard across the line. The enthusiast standing by Clowes expended the last relics of his voice in commemorating the fact that his side had the lead.
“Drummond’ll be good next year,” said Trevor. And he made a mental note to tell Allardyce, who would succeed him in the command of the school football, to keep an eye on the player in question.