Football

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 72, 6 December 1892, Page 2

Football

By Proteus. I have just heard that the next sensation will be a football match played by two bands of the fair sex. Mother of the Antique Moses can this be true ? Is it possible that girls are going to unsex themselves so outrageously as to play foot. ball ? It has always "been my fond impresßion that woman was the most perfect of all the Creator's works, the masterpiece and most beautiful being of His mighty conception. A being celestial, sent as it were for a brief space to brighten the earth with her beauty and her gentleness. But, alas, when she climbs down to imitate man and all his actions, to wear bis coat, waistcoat, hat, shirt, and she will don Ins breeches anon. When she plays billiards, cricket, and other, manly games ; smokes, swears, speaks slang ; and now— to complete (he catastrophe—she is going in for football. I fancy I can sec the sweet creatures playing football ; I can see the two bands of counterfeit angels dressed in— nothing particular but a smile of defiance, and No. 12 boots ; I can see the charming Maud stpp out with the ball and display a profusion of stocking in her frantic en dearour to kick tlie ball into the blue ethereal ; 1 can see the gentle Mary Jane suddenly swap ends, and, as she stands on her head, diligently indicate the twelve signs of the Zodiac with her fairy feet ; and there is the scrum, where all is a chaos of bare lees and arms, ruptured garments, and original blasphemy. There, on the lee shore of a duck pond, reclineth the lovely Matilda, and there, dancing a breakdown on her shattered form are fire female members of a muscular family who are ardently trying to make two distinct halves of the original Matilda, and, as Burns says, " Other things baith horrible and aweful, which c'en to name would be unlawful." This picture would be highly entertaining to a portion of the spectators, and would be applauded to tbe echo ; but take my advice, dear girls, and don't play football, for if you do, those whom you wish to at tract will form a mighty poor opinion of you. -But, after all, football 19 a noble game.. I once played it myself, but that was while I was laboring under temporary insanity. I was poor and forsaken, I had tried everything to make an honest living — from being private, secretary to Te Eooti, to a book pirate — but all in vain. At last I was reduced to the alternative of annexing isolated clothes lines or becoming an M.H.B. I choose the latter alternative as being the most lucrative and not so labourious, also because it required less brain power. I soon impressed a lot of " dead heads " in my neighborhood with the idea that I was a fit and proper person to ' mis represent' them in that political gas house yclept the House of Representatives, and when I was duly returned I thought this was the lowest I could Ret without dig ging. So I spent the last proceeds from a clothes-line in whiskey, then went on the warpath. I threw a considerable number of miniature rocks at my mother in-latr (because she insinuated that my next step would he through a trap-door — with a rope round my neck) ; I emptied two barrells of No. 3 shot into the. system of v hanged tailed celestial; and tried ardently to assassinate a book agent, but he persuaded me, with a wood axe, to wade through & swamp to a paddock where some lunatics were playing football I found an old friend in one of the players, who strongly urged me to take his place in tbe game, as he had just had his back broken in two or three places, both legs fractured, and a few more minor accidents, which, he explained, would incapacitate him from playing any more that day. I consented. He ex* plained the modus operafidi, and told me to con trey the bail across a certain line when an opportunity should offer. I conceived the thing was easy to do, and when a land pirate (m the enemy's ranks) kicked the ball np against the top side of the firmament it dropped at my feet* " Now," I soliloquised, " this is my chance," and I picked np that ball and aimlessly wandered towards the line. Wby, there was no art in it. . I had a confused sensation of trying to swallow a great number ot assorted sized boots, and a large continent of the human spe cies danced a hecl«and«toe polka on my stomach. I made no observation while they were conveying me to the local hospital, but when I awoke to consciousness a few doctors were holding a post mor* tern examination on my mangled re* mains. They adzed off a few of the most prominent protruberences from my person, extracted several miscellaneous articles from my system, and observed that I would be a firgt«class subject for a coroner's inquest. One remarked that I had surely been doing the parachute business in the milky way and had let go everything and came end over end on to the roof of a synagogue. They all agreed that I was as dead as Nebuchadnezzar's uncle, and then left me. I availed my* self of this opportunity to gather up the greater portion of my own remains which were scattered around, and retired to the privacy of a swamp for a few days. Yes, football is a beautiful game— but a little trying to the system.