The Game of Football

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 132, 27 April 1893, Page 4

The Game of Football

Mr F- . H. R. Alderson, a well-known English Rugby football player, lectured recently in the Free Library Hall, South Shield^, on " Football, and How to Hay It" He said that at present they were passing through a critical period in connection with Kugby football. The game, he thought was wortli playing, and for the young and healthy a better recreation could not be got for the winter months. It was a great mistake, however, for those to play football who were not young and healthy, and he thought that iootball was a cheap recreation for the masses. Speaking of tbe system of playing four three-quarter »backs, he said in the alter* alion of the style of play which had been brought about, there was now so much work thrown upon the centre man that be was run off his lees, and he had to have another man in the centre to help him. He had played in the centre tfow for several years, and he found that each year he got more work, and he could not do without the assistance which the four three-quarter back system supplied. There was a proposal to reduce the number or players to thirteen, but he did not think that that was a good system at all, because if they reduced the number to 13, it reduced the game to merely runners. Now, they did not want merely sprinters or runners ; they wanted pluck in going for a man, and determination in pushing. Stick to fifteen and play four three quar* ters, was his game. He appealed to them to guard against professionalism, put down betting, and play the game in a gentlemanly manner. — Waipawa Mail,