About 1828 the annual matches, both at cricket and football, between the Oppidans and Collegers were done away with. They were always the most stoutly contested games of the year, and put both parties on their mettle far beyond the excitement of any other match. A good deal of bitterness was sometimes displayed, and now and then a smack on the head or a designed “shin” were given and received; but, on the whole, these matches did something to draw Oppidans and Collegers together, and their abolition is to be deplored, though, in the present age, the great excess of Oppidans would, it must be confessed, have rendered their continuance difficult.
ST. ANDREW’S DAY
Of all the various contests which formerly took place between Collegers and Oppidans the annual match at the wall on St. Andrew’s Day alone survives, and has lost none of its interest, though the two elevens are chosen from seventy Collegers and from close on a thousand Oppidans. In reality the chances of victory are in a great degree equalised owing to the fact that whilst the Collegers have every opportunity of playing the game during the whole of the time—usually about six years—during which they remain at Eton, only a small number of Oppidans play at all till within two years of their leaving school. It would here be superfluous to enter upon any detailed description of the game. |THE “WALL”| Suffice it to say that it is played within a narrow strip of ground some twenty feet wide and close up against the old wall built in 1717, the goals being the tree with a white mark at the end towards Slough, and the door of Weston’s Yard at the Eton end. The origin of this peculiar form of football is very obscure. Mr. E. C. Benthall, K.S., Keeper of the Wall in the present year, 1911, who has most obligingly furnished me with some interesting information, believes that it originated from “passage football,” and doubts if it was ever played very seriously till about one hundred years ago, at which time it was an entirely different game from what it is now. In spite of its quaint terms, it would seem to be of no great antiquity, at least in anything like its present form. The wall itself dates from 1717, but about the earliest record of any regular game there dates from the first decade of the nineteenth century, at which time any one who chose seems to have been allowed to play, with the result that there were usually eighteen or twenty a side. It was then practically the only form of football popular at Eton, though occasionally something approaching to the modern “Field Game” was played in the open. Till 1841, however, such forms of relaxation were discouraged by the masters. Nevertheless, on the piece of grass between the path and the river in Lower Club the Collegers, up till about 1863, played a variety known as “Lower College.” This was probably a link between the field and wall games, for it had “shies” and “goals.” In early days the wall game was played on a much wider strip of ground than is at present the case. The bully was not its essential feature, and the ball was often run down the whole length of the wall. Sixty years or so ago matches of Dames v. Tutors were occasionally played, and during one of these the ball somehow was pitched right on the top of the wall, along which it ran for some eight yards before coming to a dead standstill on the top.
The rules were then, of course, more elastic than those now in use, and since they were drawn up in 1849 the game has undergone various minor changes, including the curtailment of the space at the wall to its present limits and the toleration (about 1851) of “furking” the ball back in calx.
At one time considerable savagery seems to have been displayed by the rival teams, in consequence of which Dr. Hawtrey once suspended all play for three weeks, and in 1851 it was actually proposed to abolish the annual match on St. Andrew’s Day on account of the ill-feeling which was said to be engendered between Oppidans and Collegers. Of late years, however, the historic contest is remarkable for the good-humour shown by both sides. A quaint figure at the annual match from 1847 up to 1888, the year before he fell ill, was old Powell, whose old-fashioned velveteen coat and high top-hat were survivals of another age. During his long superintendence of the wall he had seen many generations of Collegers and Oppidans contending for goals and shies. After ten years of confinement and suffering he died in 1899.
The wall game is as different from any other form of football as it is possible to imagine. To one unacquainted with its intricacies, nothing can be more curious than the bully close up against the wall, and the efforts of those forming it to prevent kicks sending the ball out—that is to say, beyond the line marked as the limit within which play takes place. The rules really amount to a sort of complicated creed, which has been handed on from one generation of Collegers to another. A good deal of the game is mystifying to a spectator unacquainted with its intricacies. A “calx bully,” for instance, is highly difficult to explain, whilst the necessary preliminaries for a “shy” at goals are often, owing to the confusion of the struggle, visible only to the umpire. The summit of a wall-player’s ambition is to throw a “goal,” which feat, in the annual St. Andrew’s Day match, has only been accomplished three times within the last hundred years—in every case by a Colleger. W. Marcon threw one in 1842, when College won by a goal and 19 shies, 17 of which were got by H. Phillott in rapid succession. H. J. Mordaunt, captain of the eleven in 1886, threw another in 1885, when he hit the door just at the bottom. |A HISTORIC GOAL| The name of this fine athlete, the writer (who knew him at Eton) is informed, is still a household word in College, where his goal is held in greater reverence than that scored in 1909. Mordaunt’s was an unaided effort, whilst the latter seems to have been rather lucky. Nevertheless, Finlay and Creasy deserved the greatest credit for their presence of mind. In 1858, it should be added, a throw by Hollingworth was disputed.
Though of all pastimes the wall game is least adapted for summer, time-honoured usage prescribed—and after a discontinuance for four years now once again prescribes—that at six o’clock on the morning of Ascension Day a mixed team of Collegers and Oppidans should meet at the “Wall.” The origin of this custom I have been unable to ascertain. Like the game played on the last evening of last summer half, it probably took its rise from boyish enthusiasm.
In connection with the wall game, the name of James Kenneth Stephen—the gifted J. K. S., who in his prime was so unfortunately snatched away by death—will never be forgotten. Captain of the College team in 1876-1877, he was a great supporter of “noster ludus muralis,” as he has left on record in his “Quo Musa Tendis,” one stanza of which runs—
There’s another wall with a field beside it,
A wall not wholly unknown to fame,