FOOTBALL as an ATHLETIC GAME

Patea Mail, 29 May 1882, Page 4

FOOTBALL as an ATHLETIC GAME

Not one of our national games has met with so much opposition as football; not one, except, perhaps, lawn-tennis, has grown so much in popularity , during the; last few years. Parents have joined with the doctor in prohibiting it; it has beenheld up to censure as rough and brutalising.; It would be : curious to know with what 1 ' feelings those who join in the chorus of disapproval regard sports and pastimes in-* finitely, more wasteful of human life. Where football claims one, the bathingseason and the hunting field claim at hundred victims. In spite however of; 'protests, the game has made surprising, strides in popular favor. Five-and-twenty; years ago no one thought of prolonging; football playing beyond his boyhood. It| was a game for boys alone ; for they alone; were sufficiently, active, sufficiently in-! different to “ hacks,” tumbles and colli-; sions with other human bodies. Now all; that is altered, and it is recognised that a: robust man on this side of thirty'has,; like a boy, superfluous energy of which; he must regularly get rid by vigorous,; perhaps violent,, exercise. All forms of athletics are a reaction against the unnerv-i ing influences of modern civilisation; and if* if football seems to give too ample play to the combativeness inherent in our animal nature, it must be remembered how it also tempers roughness with" good nature and chivalry. We may affirm with safety that nowhere so much as the football ' field is the exhibition of personal courage and personal skill so closely united with courtesy and regard for opponents.—London Times.