DANGERS OF FOOTBALL.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 318, 19 June 1875, Page 3

DANGERS OF FOOTBALL.

A discussion has been going on about the dangers of football, caused by a fatal accident to a young man named Sydney Branson, a student of St. George's Hospital, who died of injuries received by him in a match played against the Royal Naval College, Greenwich Park. The discussion was opened by a letter written by the Rev S. G. Rees, rector of Wasing, near Reading, whose only child Mr Branson was to have married. Mr Rees, whose feelings will readily be sympathised with, wrote condemning the game of footfall in toto. The topic was taken up by other correspondents and in editorial articles, and the general opinion seems to be that the savage Rugby game should not be played, but be discarded for the Eton or Association rules. It seems that in some London establishments, owing to the number of accidents that have occurred to employees while playing at football, the game is prohibited altogether, and any one joining in it does so with the certainty of immediate dismissal from his situation. This is going rather to an extreme, but it certainly does appear to be time that the Rugby rules should be abandoned, at all events in games in which grown-up men and not light boys should take part. The Lancet pronounces football safe for boys of active habits and good health, but dangerous for those of a scrofulous tendency, and still more so for those who can only engage in such violent exercise once a week. These persons, it says, should not play at football.