Bad luck! Of course, just when it’s not wanted there’s a breeze got up, blowing right down the field, and in the very teeth of the schoolboys, who have lost the toss, and have to play from the oak-tree end for the first half of the game!
“It’s always the way,” growls Ricketts. “They’ll simply eat us up while they’ve got the chance, you see!”
“No they won’t,” says Stansfield, bound to take a cheerful view of things. “We’re strong in backs. It’s not like last match, when Greenfield wasn’t playing, and Loman was there to make such a mess of it.”
“Well, it’s a comfort, that, anyhow.”
“Of course it is,” says the captain. “What you fellows have got to do is to keep the ball in close, and nurse it along all the while, or else run—but you’d better let the quarter-backs do that.”
This sage advice is not thrown away on the worthies who lead the van for Saint Dominic’s, and an opportunity for putting it into practice occurs the moment the game begins. For the School has to kick-off, and to kick-off against that wind is a hopeless business. Stansfield does not attempt anything like a big kick, but just drives the ball hard and low on to the legs of the County forwards, sending his own men close after it, so that a scrimmage is formed almost at the very spot where the ball grounds.
“Now, School, sit on it! Do you hear?” calls out the captain; and certainly it looks as if that unhappy ball were never destined to see the light again. The enemy’s forwards cannot get it out from among the feet of the School forwards, try all they will, until, by sheer weight, they simply force it through. And then, when it does go through, there is young Forrester of the Fourth ready for it, and next moment it is back in its old place in the middle of the “mush.” In due time, out it comes again—this time on Wren’s side—and once again, after a short run, there it is again, on almost the identical spot of earth where it has undergone its last two poundings.
“Played up, Dominies!” cries out Stansfield, cheerily. “Stick to it now!”
Stick to it they do, with the wind fresh on their faces, and the County fellows charging and plunging and shoving like fury upon them.
Ah! there goes the ball, out at the County end for a wonder. The spectators cheer loudly for the schoolboys. Little they know! It had much better have stayed there among their feet than roll out into the open. The County quarter-back has it in his hands in a twinkling, and in another twinkling he has lifted it with a drop-kick high into the air, all along the wind, which carries it, amid cheers and shouts, right up to the boundary of the School goal.