BRIGHTER - FOOTBALL
.A HUNDRED thousand people tried to get in to see a certain football match the other week. Only half the number could be squeezed in and the half that was suc- cessful strewed the ground with the other. half. Women fainted, men shouted and swore, mounted police paraded, and about half the half that got inside had to stand with their backs to the game because they were too tightly wedged to turn. Such thrills cannot be hoped for every week, but each Saturday, and more often than not each . Wednesday and Thursday, sees its tens of thousands of tense faces turned upon the playing field, raised as the ball rises, dropped as it drops,' swerving to right or left as it flies, swept by. delight or disgust as it dodges into goal. Bands play, ribbons of all the violent colours known to -primitive man flaunt in buttonholes or round hats, feeling is as strong as the colours : ' " Nah then, Charlie, shoot—shoot, can't yer I ".
" How can he shoot ? He's off-side-." • " 'Oo says 'e's off-side ? " " I do—what about it ! "
" ! a. lot you know abaht football."
" If I didn't known more'n you, I wouldn't waste a bob .on it ! " , . . _ Hats are thrown up, trampled upon and lost ; rattles are whirred, trumpets blown; dignified• men in the en- closures forget themselves and yell advice and encourage- ment at their chosen heroes, small boys pipe con- • tipuously, "- Well played, sir !." from that.front- position which small boys always attain, no matter from how remote a place on the outskirts they started. There are roars of applause when Charlie—or somebody else— shoots, and shoots the ball into goal from a wonderful :angle ; there are groans when Charlie—or somebody else —shoots, and misses. - There are." scenes " and a player is ordered off. . There are casualties—were there not four wounded heroes from one club•in the same hospital ward the other week, to say nothing of other clubs and other hospitals ? " Rugger " is an even- brighter • gime, thought I, as I watched a match a short while ago. Here there is no tire- some restriction about not using hands, which keeps " Soccer " from being the absolutely bright game it might be ; no need to pretend here that it was by accident that you banged up against your man when he had the ball. You can do what you like with your hands and your feet and your man. " Mark your man ! " shouted a supporter in the crowd, and the man was marked promptly by being picked up and dropped out of the way. There is a rough-and-tumble near the goal with somebody being flattened out beneath it ; then a wild break away and the field strewn with fallen bodies,- and the scrum, that apotheosis of brightness, is a thicket of legs and feet in which everything is kicked but the ball.
- Could anything " brighter " be desired ? Yet it was at this same Rugby match at Richmond that my title was inspired. It was typical football weather as we know it in England, mild and dull. Rain trickled down now and again, a leaden mist hung over the playing fields and the ground was sodden. The men who ran out of the pavilion gay in crimson or blue, striped or checked, were soon of a uniform mud-colour. And suddenly in vivid contrast memory recalled to me the scene where I had last watched football.
Less than twenty degrees from the Equator, on an island in the Southern Seas. The playing field was a strip of rough 'ground overlooking the lagoon. On the other side ran the high road blindingly white in the noon of a tropical summer, bordered with frangipanni and coco- palms and the great utu with its spreading branches and dark glossy-leaves.. The-sky was -deep blue and cloudless, huge breakers boomed and foamed over the reef, the Pacific gleamed turquoise. All round the playing field lotiogeci the graceful, laughing Polynesian girEs and boys, the former clad in cotton Overalls of bright pink or yellow, red or green the latter in a variety of costume, from shabby khaki trousers -and an old shirt hanging side, to a complete rig-out of white duck. Many of them had flowers or the ae—the circlet of beads and shells—in their shining dark hair. -The game we saw that day was played by women, for the Kanaka woman is a free creature, and, like the white woman, does all that' men do—so far as Nature will allow. The players were barefoot, and those of the home team wore scarlet frocks and scarlet -wreaths, and those of the visiting team wore- white. The game was Association, and they' played it for all they were worth though the temperature was as high as it can be on a day of tropical midsummer. -The -team was -perhaps a little mixed in sizes and weights, for apparently 'neither age nor embon- point disqualified anyone for membership. Their forwards were open to criticism on this point, and one can imagine an indignant- Cockney ejaculating as he regarded the rotundity of- the Red goatee : • " Nah then, missis, 'ow do yer think any ball's ever goin' to git past yer ! " • They obviously knew the rules of the game well enough, and,- judging by the frequency of the -referee's whigtle, were punctilious in observing them. They were perhaps not quite so sound on off-side as they are'at Twickenham • or Stamford • Bridge, but their play would have pasaed muster in many less exalted circles.
The match over, we saw, to our surprise, other players taking their places in the field. One of the smiling, flower,erowned youths near- us -gave enlightenment in his somewhat laboured English : • " It is-the same club," he said, " but now it is the -second class that will play. First the first class in each club must play, and then the second class, and then the third."
Your Kanaka reserve man has no thought of chafing in obscurity waiting for the- -first team .man to have influenza or break a leg before he gets his chance. In fact, there is no reserve. The tribal instinct still lingers and everything must be done in crowds. Every village had its club, and every club had as many grades or classes as possible, and when a match was arranged it was understood that each grade would meet the correspond- ing grade in the opposing club. Your native takes no pleasure moderately. He has epidemics of enthusiasm, and the epidemic of football was as widespread as others. While it lasted business of every kind was interrupted, for planters and storekeepers must wait for their labour, boys and clerks and salesmen till it had spent itself. The visiting team drove to the scene of action in motor lorries. Nothing is less picturesque than motor lorries, but ugliness was entirely forgotten in the sight of the decora- tive load they carried--bronze-hued Amazons and heroes arrayed in scarlet or yellow, white or green, rose pink or blue, according to their club colours, wreathed and garlanded with hibiscus and camellia, jasmine and oleander, and singing at the top of their voices. Whether victorious or vanquished, they returned as decoratively and gaily as they arrived, their parting song no doubt the equivalent of the threefold " Hip- p-h'ray " which echoes across the miry fields of England as the mud-stained players return to the pavilion.
ELIZABETH BAKER.
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