Fourth day. Practise starting with the ball. The centre man to snap the ball back for squads. There should be a good, sharp, hard sprint for fifteen yards. The aim is to train the eye so as to divine where the ball is going, so as to be able to beat it. Catching punted balls by forwards and backs. Arrange these in squads, and have the kicking backs punt to them. Begin with the end of the line, and have each man catch a punt in turn. They should be taught how to do this properly. Falling on the ball, one or two of all the different kinds of balls, and the dead ball from a dive in addition. Forwards should be lined up opposite one another and taught the theory of blocking. The centre man should snap the ball, and one side rush through while the other blocks, and vice versa. While the forwards are doing this, the backs may be kicking and catching. A short run for the whole squad of about two miles.
Work of this general description should be kept up for about ten days. In this time the captain should arrange to get in some work on the fundamentals each day. It will be impossible to take them all up in one day, but some can be taken up one day and some another. They are easily forgotten if not brushed up occasionally.
The first three weeks in October should be largely devoted to position-playing—picking the team. The captain should do all the experimenting within that period. Much straight football may be learned in the mean time. In that period, and that alone, should the coach be allowed to stop the play to coach the individual. "Wait a minute," can be allowed then, but not later. The team should have two practice matches a week. These should make no difference in the ordinary practice, except perhaps when a pretty strong team is to be played there should be a slight let-up in the practice the day before, or no actual play at all. On those days there should be plenty of practice at signals. All practice matches after the third week in October should be of the usual length, two half-hours. The practice game with the second eleven should not vary much as to the time of play from the matches. Two twenty-five or one thirty and one twenty minute half are not bad.
Toward the end of October the team should begin preparations for the final matches, which generally come off the last of that month, and little beyond mid-November. Team-play then has the field. The team should begin to learn its repertoire of plays, signals, etc. It should be taught the theory and practice of offensive and defensive team-work. In the odd moments the individual should have all the expert coaching possible. The fundamentals must be recurred to occasionally, but team-work now holds the boards. It is the most difficult to obtain, and requires constant and untiring practice.
The captain should be just as careful not to underwork his men as not to overwork them. If an individual is overtrained or off his feet, give him rest, but for the team hard work and plenty of it should be the rule. There is nothing that helps a man or a team more in the hour of supreme test or conflict than the consciousness of having done his or its work faithfully and well.
From what has been said of physical training it can be immediately seen that football is not a lazy man's game. It is needless to say that it is not a coward's game. If a man is afraid of over-exertion or of getting hurt, he had better play marbles. A player may have strength in abundance, but without sand it profiteth him nothing. High moral courage and unconquerable spirit are the prime requisites of a good football-player. By moral training, as has been said, is meant the mental state, the spirit of the eleven. The spirit of the eleven has to do with the execution, and the execution is everything. Formation counts for little. It is not the play, but the stuff that is put into it that makes it succeed. Without this spirit a team may know all that it is possible to know of the game, and may be in perfect physical condition, but cannot hope to win. It is one thing to know how to fight; it is another to be able to fight; but greater than either or both is the fighting spirit.
The whole team, each and every man on it, should enter a contest or match imbued with a just sense of the responsibility resting upon him as the chosen representative of his school or college. He owes to her the very best and all that there is in him. Her honor, her athletic prestige, are at stake, and she demands nothing more nor less of her sons than that they be retrieved or maintained. Hence the team should go upon the field with a do or die spirit, with a determination to win at all hazards.
The portraits which appear at the head of these columns are those of the officers of the National Interscholastic Athletic Association, who were elected after the first annual field-meeting last June. C. B. Cotting, the president, is a member of the Newton High-School, and an officer of the New England Association. Hugh Jackson, the vice-president, comes from the Iowa Association, and is a student of the Cedar Rapids High-School. J. D. Tilford, the secretary, has for several years been identified with the New York I.S.A.A. as a competent official, and attends the De La Salle Institute. G. P. Smith, the treasurer, represents the new association in New Jersey, of which he is president; he attends the Plainfield High-School.
At a recent meeting of the Connecticut Football Association several changes were made in the constitution. Is was decided that nobody should be allowed to take part in any games under the management of the League who had not been registered at his school before October 1. Furthermore, it was decided that no student taking a post-graduate course should be allowed to play on any team. There was some discussion about establishing an age limit, but so much opposition developed that the plan had to be abandoned.