And then, what could be more opportune than its coming off just after Christmas, at the precise time when Cripps would be looking for a final settlement of his account, or whatever little of it remained still to pay! Oh, dear! oh, dear! What a thing it is to be straight and honest! Everything prospers with a man when he goes in for being honest! Why, Loman was positively being bathed in luck at the present time!
The Saturday came at last. Stansfield had drilled his men as well as he could during the interval, and devoutly hoped that he had got a respectable team to cope with the Landfield fellows. If he could only have been sure of his half-back he would have been quite happy; and never a practice passed without his growling louder than ever at the disgraceful custom of sending useful behind-scrimmage men to Coventry. At the last moment he decided to give the responsible post to Loman, rather than move forward Wraysford from his position at “back”; and Loman’s usual place at quarter-back was filled up by young Forrester of the Fourth, greatly to that young gentleman’s trepidation and to the exultation of the Fourth Senior as a body, who felt terrifically puffed up to have one of their men actually in the first fifteen.
Some of my readers may perhaps know from actual experience what are the numerous and serious anxieties which always beset the captain of the football fifteen. If the fellow is worth his salt he knows to a nicety where he is strong and where he is weak; he knows, if the wind blows one way, which is the best quarter-back to put on the left and which on the right. He knows which of his “bulldogs” he can safely put into the middle of the scrimmage, and which are most useful in the second tier. He knows when to call “Kick!” to a man and when to call “Run!” and no man knows better when to throw the ball far out from touch, or when to nurse it along close to the line. It is all very well for outsiders to talk of football everlastingly as a game. My dear, good people, football is a science if ever there was a science; the more you know of it the more you will find that out.
This piece of lecturing is thrown in here for the purpose of observing that Stansfield was a model football captain. However worried and worrying and crabby he was in his ordinary clothes, in his football togs and on the field of battle he was the coolest, quickest, readiest, and cunningest general you could desire. He said no more than he could help, and never scolded his men while play was going on, and, best of all, worked like a horse himself in the thick of the fight, and looked to every one else to do the same.
Yet on this Saturday all the captain’s prowess and generalship could not win the match for Saint Dominic’s against Landfield.
The match began evenly, and for the first half of the time the game was one long succession of scrimmages in the middle of the ground, from which the ball hardly ever escaped, and when it did, escaped only to be driven back next moment into the “mush.”
“It’ll do at this rate!” thinks Stansfield to himself. “As long as they keep it among the forwards we shan’t hurt.”
Alas! one might almost have declared some tell-tale evil spirit had heard the boast and carried it to the ear of the enemy, for next moment half-time was called, the sides changed over, and with them the Landfielders completely reversed their tactics.
The game was no longer locked up in a scrimmage in the middle of the ground. It became looser all along the line; the ball began to slip through the struggling feet into the hands of those behind, who sent it shooting over the heads of the forwards into more open ground. The quarter-backs and half-backs on either side ran and got round the scrimmages; and when at last they were collared, took to ending up with an expiring drop-kick, which sent the ball far in the direction of the coveted goals.
Nothing could have happened worse for Saint Dominic’s, for the strain fell upon them just at their weakest point. Stansfield groaned as he saw chance after chance missed behind his scrimmages. Young Forrester played pluckily and hard at quarter-back, and shirked nothing; but he could not kick, and his short runs were consequently of little use. Callonby, of course, did good work, but Loman, the half-back, was woefully unsteady.