At Williams one afternoon, Fred Daly, former Yale Captain and coach at Williams, in trying forward passes instructed his ends to catch them at every angle and height. One man continually fumbled his attempt, just as he thought he had it sure. He was a new man to Daly, and the latter called out to him:
"What is your name?" Back came the reply, which almost broke up the football practice for the day: "Ketchum is my name."
Falling on the ball is one of the fundamentals in football. It is the ground work that every player must learn. Frank Hinkey, that great Yale Captain and player, was an artist in performing this fundamental. Playing so wonderfully well the end-rush position, his alertness in falling on the ball often meant much distance for Yale. He had wonderful judgment in deciding whether to fall on the ball or pick it up.
One of the most important things in football is knowing how to tackle properly. Some men take to it naturally and others only learn after hard, strenuous practice.
In the old days men were taught to tackle by what is known as "live tackling." I recall especially that earnest coach, Johnny Poe, whose main object in football coaching was to see that the men tackled hard and sure.
Poe, without any padding on at all, would let the men dive into him running at full speed, and the men would throw him in a way that seemed as though it would maim him for life. Some of the men weighed a hundred pounds more than he did, but he would get up and, with a smile, say:
"Come on men, hit me harder; knock me out next time."
After the first two weeks of the season, Johnny Poe was a complete mass of black and blue marks; and yet how wonderful and how self sacrificing he was in his eagerness to make the Princeton players good tacklers.
But there are few men like Johnny Poe, who are willing to sacrifice their own bodies for the instruction of others; and the next best method, and one which does not injure the players so much, is tackling the "dummy."