scrum that afforded the broader field for running. The legs in the
Balliol scrum pushed harder and the bodies squirmed to more advantage,
for our men had presently got the ball among their feet. They failed
to hold it there, however, and it popped out into a half-back's hands.
He passed it quickly to one of my companions at three-quarters, who
dodged his man and ran toward the corner of the field. I followed, and
just as the full-back collared him he passed the ball to me. Before I
had taken three rheumatic strides I had two men hanging at my back;
but when they brought me down, the ball was just beyond the line. The
audience arose as one man--to wit, the referee, who had been squatting
on the side lines--and shouted, "Played. Well played!" I had achieved
universal fame. During the rest of the game the Balliol scrum, which
was a very respectable affair of its kind, kept the ball to itself,
while we backs cooled our heels.
A few days later, in a game against Jesus, the scrums were more evenly
matched, and the ball was heeled out oftener. I soon found that my
eyes were not sharp enough to follow quick passing; and when, just
before half-time, a punt came in my direction, I was horrified to see
the ball multiply until it looked like a flock of balloons. As luck
had it, I singled out the wrong balloon to catch. Jesus fell on the
ball just as it bounced over the goal-line. In the second half the
captain put one of the forwards in my place, and put me in the scrum.
The play here was more lively, though scarcely more complex or
difficult. Each forward stuck his head beneath the shoulders of the
two men in front of him, grasped their waists, and then heaved, until,
when the ball popped out of the scrum, the word came to dissolve.
There were absolutely no regular positions; the man who was in the
front centre of one scrummage might be in the outskirts of the next.
On some teams, I found, by inquiry, a definite order is agreed on, but
this is regarded as of doubtful advantage.
When the umpire or a half-back tosses the ball into the scrummage,
there are, at an ultimate analysis, four things that can happen.
First, the two sides may struggle back and forth, carrying the ball on
the ground at their feet; this play is called a "pack." Second, the
stronger side may cleave the weaker, and run down the field, dribbling
the ball yard by yard as they go, until either side picks it up for a
run, or else drops on it and cries "down." Third, one side may be able
to "screw the scrum," a manoeuvre which almost rises to the altitude
of a "play." The captain shouts "Right!" or perhaps "Left!" and then
his forwards push diagonally, instead of directly, against their
opponents. The result is very like what we used to call a revolving
wedge, except that, since the ball is carried on the ground, the play
eventuates, when successful, in a scattering rush of forwards down the
field, dribbling the ball at their feet, just as when the scrum has
been cloven. The fourth possibility is that the side that gets the
ball amongst its eighteen legs allows it to ooze out behind, or, if
its backs are worthy of confidence, purposely heels it out. Thereupon
results the play I have already described: one of the half-backs
pounces upon it and passes it deftly to the three-quarters, who run
with it down the field, if necessary passing it back and forth. In
plays which involve passing or dribbling, English teams sometimes
reach a very high degree of skill: few sights on the football field
are more inspiring than to see a "combination" of players rush in open
formation among their opponents, shifting the ball from one to another
with such rapidity and accuracy as to elude all attempts to arrest
it. As a whole, the game of the forwards is much more fun than that of
the backs, though decidedly less attractive in the eyes of the
spectators--a consideration of slight importance on an English field!
[Illustration: THROWING IN THE BALL]
Just as I began to get warmed to my new work I smashed my nose against
the head of a Balliol man who was dodging back into the push. The
captain told me that I need not finish the game; but as it is against
the English rules to substitute players and we were still far from
sure of winning, I kept to my grunting and shoving. At the end of the
game the captain very politely gave me the hoof. This was just what I
expected and deserved; but I was surprised to find that the fellows
had objected to my playing the game through with a bloody nose. They
would have preferred not to be bled upon.
This regard for pleasantness and convenience, which to an American is
odd enough, is characteristic even of 'varsity football. The
slenderness of the preliminary training of a 'varsity fifteen is
incredible to any American who has not witnessed it. To sift the
candidates there is a freshman match and a senior match, with perhaps
one or two "squashes"--that is to say, informal games--besides. And
even these tests are largely a matter of form. Men are selected
chiefly on their public school reputations or in consequence of good
work on a college fifteen. The process of developing players, so
familiar to us, is unknown. There is no coaching of any kind, as we
understand the word. When a man has learned the game at his public
school or in his college, he has learned it for all time, though he
will, of course, improve by playing for the university. The need of
concentrated practice is greatly lessened by the fact that the soft
English winter allows as long a season of play as is desired. The team
plays a game or two a week against the great club teams of
England--Blackheath, Richmond, London Scottish, Cardiff, Newport, and
Huddersfield--with perhaps a bit of informal kicking and punting
between times. When the weather is too bad, it lays off entirely.
All this does not conduce to the strenuousness of spirit Americans
throw into their sports. In an inter-varsity match I saw the Oxford
team which was fifty per cent. better allow itself to be shoved all
over the field: it kept the game a tie only by the rarest good
fortune. It transpired later that the gayeties of Brighton, whither
the team had gone to put the finishing touches on its training, had
been too much for it. In an American university such laxity would be
thought the lowest depth of unmanliness, but I could not see that any
one at Oxford really resented it; at most it was a subject for mild
sarcasm. You can't expect a team to be in the push everywhere!
This lack of thorough preparation is even more characteristic of the
international teams--England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales--that
yearly play for the championship of Great Britain. They are chosen
from the most brilliant players in the leading clubs, and local
jealousy makes the task of choosing most delicate. The temptation is
to take a man or two impartially from each of the great fifteens. As
the international teams take little or no practice as a whole, the
tendency in the great games is to neglect the finer arts of dribbling
and passing in combination--the arts for which each player was
severally chosen--and revert to the primitive grunting and shoving. In
the great games, accordingly, the team which is man for man inferior
as regards the fine points may prevail by sheer strength, so that the
result is liable to be most unsatisfactory. Some years ago, owing to
local jealousy, the Welsh international had to be chosen mainly from a
single club--with the result that it won the championship; and in 1901
the canny Scotch team won by intentionally selecting its members, in
spite of local jealousy, on the score of their familiarity with one
another's play.
The very rules under which the game is played are calculated to
moderate the struggle. As a result of the rule against substituting,
to which I have referred, any extreme of hard play in the practice
games, such as lays off dozens of good American players yearly, is not
likely to be encouraged. Of course good men "crock," as they call it;
but where an injury is practically certain to disqualify a man from
the inter-varsity match, the football limp and the football patch can
scarcely be regarded as the final grace of athletic manhood. Willful
brutality is all but unknown; the seriousness of being disqualified
abets the normal English inclination to play the game like a person of
sense and good feeling. The physical effect of the sport is to make
men erect, lithe, and sound. And the effect on the nervous system is
similar. The worried, drawn features of the American player on the eve
of a great contest are unknown. An Englishman could not understand how
it has happened that American players have been given sulphonal during
the last nights of training. English Rugby is first of all a sport, an
exercise that brings manly powers into play; as Hamlet would say, the
play's the thing. It is eminently an enjoyable pastime, pleasant to
watch, and more pleasant to take part in.
That our American game is past hoping for on the score of playability
is by no means certain. As the historical critics of literature are
fond of saying, a period of rapid development is always marked by
flagrant excesses, and the development of modern American football has
been of astonishing rapidity. Quite often the game of one season has
been radically different from the games of all preceding seasons. This
cannot continue always, for the number of possible variations is
obviously limited, and when the limit is reached American Rugby will
be, like English Rugby, the same old game year in and year out.
Everybody, from the youngest prep. to the oldest grad., will know it
and love it.
The two vital points in which our game differs from the
English--"possession of the ball" and "interference"--are both the
occasion of vigorous handling of one's opponents. When an American
player is tackled, he seldom dares to pass the ball for fear of losing
possession of it, so that our rule is to tackle low and hard, in order
to stop the ball sharply, and if possible to jar it out of the
runner's grasp. In England, it is still fair play to grab a man by the
ankle. This is partly because of the softness of the moist thick
English turf; but more largely because, as passing is the rule, the
tackler in nine cases out of ten aims at the ball. The result is that
a man is seldom slammed to the earth as he would be in our game. It is
this fact that enables the English player to go bare-kneed.
The danger from interference in the American game is also
considerable. When a man is blocked off, he is liable to be thrown
violently upon the far from tender bosom of our November mother-earth.
Any one familiar with the practice of an American eleven will remember
the constant cry of the coaches: "Knock your man on the ground! Put
him out of the play!" It has been truly enough said that the American
game has exaggerated the most dangerous features of the two English
games--the tackling of English Rugby and the "charging" or
body-checking of the Association game.
Yet this is only a partial statement of the case. These elements of
possession of the ball and interference have raised our game
incalculably above the English game as a martial contest. Whereas
English Rugby has as yet advanced very little beyond its first
principles of grunting and shoving, the American game has always been
supreme as a school and a test of courage; and it has always tended,
albeit with some excesses, toward an incomparably high degree of
skill and strategy. Since American football is still in a state of
transition, it is only fair to judge the two games by the norm to
which they are severally tending. The Englishman has on the whole
subordinated the elements of skill in combination to the pleasantness
of the sport, while the American has somewhat sacrificed the
playability of the game to his insatiate struggle for success and his
inexhaustible ingenuity in achieving it. More than any other sport,
Rugby football indicates the divergent lines along which the two
nations are developing. By preferring either game a man expresses his
preference for one side of the Atlantic over the other.
IV
TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS
In track and field athletics, the pleasantness and informality of
English methods of training reach a climax. In America we place the
welfare of our teams in the hands of a professional trainer, who,
through his aide-de-camp, the undergraduate captain, is apt to make
the pursuit of victory pretty much a business. Every autumn newcomers
are publicly informed that it is their duty to the university to train
for the freshman scratch games. At Oxford, I was surprised to find,
there was not only no call for candidates, but no trainer to whom to
apply for aid. The nearest approach to it was the groundsman at the
Iffley Running Grounds, a retired professional who stoked the boilers
for the baths, rolled the cinder-path, and occasionally acted as
"starter." As his "professional" reputation as a trainer was not at
stake in the fortunes of the Oxford team, his attitude was humbly
advisory. The president of the Athletic Club never came near the
grounds, being busy with rowing on a 'varsity trial eight, and later
with playing Association football for the university. To one
accustomed to train not only for the glory of his alma mater but for
the reputation of his trainer, the situation was uninspiring.
As I might have expected, the impetus to train came from the college.
I was rescued from a fit of depression by a college-mate, a German,
who wanted some one to train with. At school he had run three miles in
remarkable time; but later, when an officer in the German army, his
horse had rolled over him at the finish of a steeple-chase, and the
accident had knocked out his heart; so he was going to try to sprint.
I advised him against all training, and the groundsman shook his head.
Yet he was set upon showing the Englishmen in Balliol that a German
could be a sportsman. This was no idle talk, as I found later, when he
fainted in the bath after a fast hundred, and failed by no one knows
how little of coming to. We were soon joined by a third Balliol man, a
young Greek poet, whose name is familiar to all who are abreast of the
latest literary movement at Athens. He was taking up with athletics
because of his interest in the revival of the ancient glories of
Greece. When I asked him what distance suited him best--whether he was
a sprinter or a runner--he answered with the sweet reasonableness of
the Hellenic nature that any distance would suit him that suited me.
A motlier trio than we, I suppose, never scratched a cinder-path. Yet
the fellows in our college seemed almost as interested as they were
amused; and we soon found that even so learned a place as Balliol
would have been glad to bolster its self-esteem by furnishing its
quota of "running blues." What was lacking in the way of stimulus from
the university was more than made up for by the spontaneous interest
of the fellows in college.
The rudimentary form of athletics is in meetings held by the separate
colleges. These occur throughout the athletic season, namely, the
autumn term and the winter term; and as hard on to a score of colleges
give them, they come off pretty often. The prizes are sums of money
placed with the Oxford jeweler, to be spent in his shop as the winners
see fit. In America, the four classes, which are the only sources of
athletic life independent of the university, are so moribund socially
that it never occurs to them to get out on the track for a day's
sport. It is true that we sometimes hold inter-class games, but the
management of these is in the hands of the university; they are
inspired solely by a very conscious attempt to develop new men, and to
furnish the old ones with practice in racing. The vitality of the
athletic spirits in the English colleges is witnessed by the fact that
an Oxford college frequently meets a fit rival at Cambridge in a set
of dual games just for the fun of it.
The only bond between the numerous college meetings and the university
sports is a single event in each, called a strangers' race, which is
open to all comers. The purpose of these races is precisely that of
our inter-class meetings--to give all promising athletes practice in
competition. As the two prizes in each strangers' race average five
pounds and thirty shillings respectively, the races are pretty
efficient. Though the "blues" sometimes compete--Cross made his record
of 1m. 54-2/5s. for the half mile in one of them--they generally
abandon them to the new men of promise. While the president and the
"blues" generally are rowing and playing football, the colleges thus
automatically develop new material for the team.
The climax of the athletic meetings of the autumn term is the freshman
sports, held on two days, with a day's interval. The friends of the
various contestants make up a far larger audience than one finds at
similar sports in America; and a brass band plays while the races are
on. The whole thing is decidedly inspiring; and for the first time
one is brought face to face with the fact that there are inter-varsity
games in store.
When the winter term opens, bleak and rainy, the strangers' races
bring out more upper classmen. By and by the "blues" themselves appear
in sweater, muffler, and blazer, and "paddle" about the track to
supple their muscles and regain disused racing strides. At the end of
a fortnight I noticed a middle-aged gentleman with whom the prominent
athletes conferred before and after each day's work. I soon found that
he was Mr. C. N. Jackson, a don of Hertford College, who should always
be remembered as the first hurdler to finish in even time. It is he
who--save the mark--takes the place of our American trainers. At one
of our large American universities about this time, as I afterwards
learned, a very different scene was enacting. The trainer and the
captain called a mass-meeting and collected a band of Mott Haven
champions of the past to exhort the University to struggle free from
athletic disgrace. Though the inter-varsity games were nearly four
months in the future--instead of six or seven weeks as at
Oxford--those ancient athletes aroused such enthusiasm that 268 men
undertook the three months of indoor training. To one used to such
exhortations, the Oxford indifference was as chilling as the weather
we were all training in. Mr. Jackson seemed never to notice me; and
how could I address him when he had not even asked me to save the
university from disgrace? I was forced to the unheroic expedient of
presenting a card of introduction. To my surprise, I found that he had
been carefully watching my work from day to day, but had not felt
justified in giving advice until I asked for it.
Even during the final period of training, everything happened so
pleasantly and naturally that I had none of the nervous qualms common
among American athletes. At first I thought I missed the early morning
walks our teams take daily, the companionship and jollity of the
training-table, and the sense that the team was making a common
sacrifice for an important end. Yet here, too, the college made up in
a large measure for what I failed to find in the university. One of
our eightsmen was training with a scrub four that was to row a crew of
schoolboys at Winchester; and we had a little course of training of
our own. Every morning we walked out for our dip to Parson's Pleasure,
and breakfasted afterward beneath an ancient ivied window in the
common room. In the pleasantness and quiet of those sunlit mornings, I
began to realize that our training-table mirth, which is sometimes so
boisterous, is in part at least due to intense excitement and
overwrought nerves. And the notion of self-sacrifice, which appeals to
us so deeply, seemed absurd where we were all training for the
pleasure and wholesomeness of sport, and for the sake of a ribbon of
blue.
The interest the university took in our welfare became made manifest
when the "first strings" were sent off to Brighton for the change in
climate which all English teams require before great games. Some of
the rest of us, who had nowhere else to go, went with them, but most
of the men went home to train. The second string in the three miles
stayed up at Oxford for commemoration, and joined us after three
consecutive nights of dancing. He said that he found he needed staying
up work.
Every morning at Brighton the president made the round of our quarter
of the hotel shortly before eight o'clock, and spoiled our waking naps
to rout us out for our morning's walk, which included a plunge into
the Channel. For breakfast, as indeed for all our meals, we had
ordinary English fare, with the difference only that it was more
abundant.
On alternate days our training consisted in cross-country walks of ten
or a dozen miles. Our favorite paths led along the chalk cliffs, and
commanded a lordly view of the Channel. Sometimes, for the sake of
variety, we went by train to the Devil's Dyke and tramped back over
the downs, now crossing golf-links and now skirting cornfields ablaze
with poppies. All this walking filled our lungs with the Brighton air,
and by keeping our minds off our races, prevented worry. Sprinters and
distance men walked together, though the sprinters usually turned back
a mile or two before the rest. The rate prescribed was three and a
half miles an hour; but our spirits rose so high that we had trouble
in keeping it below five.[2]
The training dinners furnished the really memorable hours of the day.
A half-pint of "Burton bitter" was a necessity, and a pint merely
rations. If one preferred, he might drink Burgundy _ad lib._, or
Scotch and soda. After trials there was champagne. When I told the
fellows that in America our relaxation consists in ice-cream for
Sunday dinner, they set me down as a humorist. After dinner, instead
of coffee and tobacco, we used to go out to the West Pier, which was a
miniature Coney Island, and amuse ourselves with the various
attractions. The favorite diversion was seeing the Beautiful Living
Lady Cremated. The attraction was the showman, who used to give an
elaborate oration in Lancashire brogue. Every word of it was funny,
but especially the closing sentence: "The Greeks 'ad a ancient custom
of porun' a liebation on the cinders of the departud, which custom,
gentlemen, we omits." We used to laugh so heartily at this that the
showman would join in, and even the beautiful living lady would
snicker companionably, as she crawled away beneath the stage. If the
reader is unable to see the fun of it, there is no help for
him--except, perhaps, an English training dinner.
The rest of the evenings we used to spend in strolling about among the
crowd, breathing the salt air, and listening to the music. We did not
lack companionship, for the Oxford and Cambridge cricket elevens were
at Brighton, and the entire Cambridge athletic team. Many of the
cricketers, and not a few of the Cambridge athletes--whom the Oxford
men called "Cantabs," and sometimes even "Tabs"--paraded the place
puffing bulldog pipes. The outward relationship between the rival
teams was simply that of man to man. If one knew a Cambridge man he
joined him, and introduced the fellows he happened to be walking with.
One day the Cambridge president talked frankly about training, urging
us to take long walks, and inviting us to go with his men. The only
reason we did not go was that our day for walking happened to be
different from theirs.
The days on which we did our track work we spent largely in London, at
the Queen's Club grounds, in order to get a general sense of the track
and of the conditions under which the sports were to take place.
Sometimes, however, we ran at Preston Park, on the outskirts of
Brighton.