A FOOTBALL SERMON

Hokitika Guardian, 4 June 1921, Page 3

A FOOTBALL SERMON

° (By the Rev. Gordon Lang)

If true religion i.s not without its influence upon sport, it is equally true that real sport can have a practical influenco upon religion. In common with many scores of parsons I shall he at the Cup-tie on April 23, anxious to see a great game and to see the honours go to the best side, with a little leaning as to which is the better team. Again and again as I have witnessed “this great game have I felt what a striking similitude there is here to the great game of life. The field of play, the rules of the game, players and spectators alike all have their counterpart in the sterner —and often more surprising—game of life.

At tho outset there is one important difference to bo noticed. At the fateful toss the rival captains will have paid attention to all the advantages and disadvantages of the field of play, with especial regard to the wind and the slope, knowing, however, that each in turn will share the difficulties of any slope, if not of the wind. This i.s not always so in life. Some of us are always playing up the slope with the wind, in the form of fortune or circumstance, ever against us, though we always hope still for a. change over at the “interval,” even if it he long deferred. But the greater the obstacles the keener the play, and the more glorious the victory if we do pull it off. Let the game be clean—that is the main thing. There is always an impulse to steal an advantage and to play offside, but public opinion is a stern referee and sooner or later will have us “spotted.”

Some players, I am told, cannot avoid infringing this rule and do not mean to take an unfair advantage. Then they should not play. Neither should their counterparts in the greater game. They should be treated as diseased.

From nothing in connection with the game can more important lessons be learned than from a consideration of the spectators. If football were a less exciting game I should often feel that I had bad my “Money’s worth” in the study in mob psychology which the football crowd affords.

Frequently the advent of bad feeling is due to the spectators, and it is a common truism that no good player will heed the'advice or the plaudits of the crowd. Neither indeed can we do so when engaged in the struggle of life. “Eight is right,” irrespective of public opinion or popular approval. If we do not know the rules of the game, the rights and wrongs of human experience, for ourselves, we shall gain little from the hydra-headed prophet vox-populi. That public opinion which counts is based upon real experience, and it is

always the most silent, in football and in life. We ought when busy to bo too earnest about the things that matter to have any regard for what people think, and when we pause to watch others play our own shortcomings should make us too sympathetic to criticise or gratuitously advise. We can each of us learn much from this Cup-tie. May it not inspire us to train well for the sterner stuff we have to meet and to do? Also we shall remember to carry out the rules of the game in the right spirit, to he heedless of the garrulous crowd, and sympathetic to the inexperienced. Above all, we shall endeavour to score, not for ourselves alone, nor even “on oi>r own” if we can .help others to do it with more certainty, but wo shall score for our time, our generation, and for our supporters, those who have reposed such hope and confidence in us.—London Daily Mail.