You hear of well-known footballers kicking over the traces,
passing from club to club, and marring what might have been
great reputations. If you will look into the history of these
men you will find that in nineteen cases out of twenty their
bad relations with their employers are due to the fact that
they are accustomed to imbibe too much alcohol. Alcohol is,
indeed, the footballer’s greatest enemy; at any rate, to put it
simply and straightforwardly, no man ever played football the
better for taking alcohol, and many men have played it
infinitely worse by reason of their indulgence therein.
Every football manager likes to get together a team of
tee-totalers. If you take the records of the greatest players,
or perhaps I might say the great players who have had
phenomenally long and honourable careers, you will find that in
nearly every case they were either life-long abstainers or
rigidly moderate men. I could give many instances if space
permitted.