FOOTBALL CONTESTS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5294, 2 July 1928, Page 3

FOOTBALL CONTESTS.

ENGLISH CUP FINALS. THE MORAL ASPECT. Dr. Sidney Berry recently had a good word for the English Cup Final crowds, and detailed! sieveral points in favour of the great football carnival. Writing in the “ Yorkshire Observer,” he presents the following, case : — “Cup Final day-has become a national festival. With iio greater regularity did the chosen people set out for Jerusalem than the enthusiasts; of 100 football fields make their annual pigrimage to one of the great sporting, events of the year. “Industry may be depressed, economic prophets may declare their depressing verdicts, but somehow enough has been saved out of the weekly earnings to make the accustomed trap.

“Moralists may see in this annual festival-one of the-significant sighs 'of the times, and to moralists the significant is nearly always the pessimisticSomq of them have been known to criticise this absorption of great masses of the people in a mere sporting event, and even to compare the Staflium with the Roman amphitheatre, where the populace spent in emotional excitement the energy which, more wisely directed, might have helped to save the State from ruin.

“Others:, drawing an idealistic picture of the past, contrast the days of the old) village green, with the vast crowds who are drawn together to watch professional play. Have we become a pation 'of spectators rather than players, and does the change mark a decline ? The critic of .modern modes and manners suggests fi depressing answer to that question, but it is well to hestitate before accepting his conclusions. “In the first place, the Saturday afternoon football match gives the crowds open air and healthy interest on the week’s half-holiday. The crowded ground means a»n empty taproom, and football has probably done more in the direction of temperate habits than all "the temperance speeches put togther. Besides that, it has* produced: an outlet for healthy rivalries, and if one may use the jargon of the psychologists, one would Say that it has helped to “sublimate” the instinct of pugnacity .in human nature.

“William James once declared that the world would never be. rid of war unti it had discovered a ‘moral equivalent’ for. war. Football may not be exactly a moral equivalent for war. but it is. certainly a sport which has prolided a healthy outlet for pugnacity. Although now and again there may be outbreaks of bad temper among the- crowd, it may well be that the common respect given to the decision of the referee is t one of the best preparations for industrial ,andi international arbitration.

“In the social history of the age no one caii ignore the value of popular sport as an educative factor. It has drawn the interest of the crowd to a common centre, and the verdict of the historian will probably be that in an age of restlessness and strain it provided an antidote to the propaganda of violence. “So there is another side to the moralist’s strictures. Let him remember that a nation which storms the turnstiles is not likely to storm its Bastilles, and that the hoarsethroated c'ries which follow'. Blackburn .and Huddersfield might easily have found some more destructive path of discharge.