WORSE THAN WAR

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 12, 14 June 1913, Page 10

WORSE THAN WAR

FOOTBALL IN AMERICA. The story is told in America of two men wljo were carried at the same time [ to a hospital—an aeronaut, who had • fallen 2000 feet, and a football player, •who got -'tangled up in a rush." "Winch shall! attend to first?" the only unoccu--1 surgeon asked of the house-physi-cian. "Which shall you attend to?" was the impatient retort. "Haven't I told you that in a case like this you must attend to the man who is most seriously hurt? The balloon man can wait, of course." ' This story is no doubt a pleasant exaggeration; but no one who has looked on at a football match across the Pacific, with its fierce rushes of ''armored" players, its pyramids of writhing humanity, and the ceaseless coming and going of stretcher parties, will dispute that it is a game calculated to strike terror to the heart of the average person. In one recent season (and the American season is one of barely two months) the casualty list included 18 men killed and 130 seriously wounded, the injuries ranging from 24 broken legs to 20 cases of concussion of the brain; and in a single match, at Schenectady, between the Wesleyan University and the Union College, no fewer than 17 players were carried unconscious from the field, while ! four medical men were kept as busy as on a battlefield. THE "ARMOR." For such a "game," as fierce as any! gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome,-the I player is equipped from head to foot with armor as complete as a mediaeval knight. His sleeveless jacket is of the heaviest and toughest canvas, laced up in front; for no buttons could stand for a moment against the terrific strain on them. His trousers of moleskin or canvas are thickly padded at the knees and across the thighs. Bandages of cotton or silk are tightly wound rounu wrists and ankles. His head is protected by a huge leather cap, not unlike an inverted cooking utensil; leather shields cover the ears and the greater part of the face; and his nose is guarded by a huge piece of indiarubber, perforated for breathing. Each elbow and knee has its leather guard, and the shins are encased in a guard with two long ribs of rattan between stout thicknesses of leather. Thus equipped the "gladiators"—eleven on each side, looking like so many grotesque divers on dry land—prepare for the fray, crouching low to the ground i like wild animals ready to spring on their prey. A whistle sounds shrilly, and the rival teams hurl themselves at each other in what seems a frenzy of fury. The game has begun, and it is played to the bitter end with a crescendo of excitement which knows no pause, though every man may be carried wounded off the field, for each man's place is instantly taken by a waiting substitute as keen and doughty as himself. And I fierce as is the excitement in the arena, it has its counterpart among the tens of' thousands of spectators—a dense mass of wildly-shouting, gesticulating humanity I. wrought almost to the pitch of delirium by the fury of the spectacle.

■ j THE GAME. '. j In this remarkable game the ball is I rarely kicked; it is carried forward by j \ one fierce rush after another. The J < \ field is divided into chequers, each five yards square, and if, in three attempts, J a team can push and struggle with the -, ! ball five yards forward they are doing J well. In a keenly-contested match it) t is impossible to keep the ball off the I C ground for more than a few seconds at 5 a time. As one team dashes forward, B with the ball the opponents fling them- £, selves upon them with the fury of a \ "* tornado, dragging the ball from them, or j bearing the man who carries it to the ground beneath a pile of struggling con- j testants." At a shriek from the re-) feree's whistle the players disentangle j themselves from the writhing mass of ( legs and arms—except such as are too much injured to rise, and are swiftly carried off the field. Xo wonder* that we read in a recent re-), port: "Many women who had relatives among the players fainted and cried, hut all efforts to moderate the fierceness of the combatants failed. Every scrimmage was the scene of indiscriminate kicking and punching against which the stout leather armor was useless. When the game ended all the substitutes avail- ) able to both elevens had been called in. The result was a draw. Neither side J had kicked a goal, so busy had they been I in kicking each other." ) ■ Katnrally such a strenuous game calls j for strenuous training. On the first day ' of the season, at Yale, for instance, a hundred picked men are trotted, in squads, half-a-dozen times round the field, and then have to hurl themselves on to grass and roll over. They are then taken to the training house and well massaged, as a preliminary to facing the "dummy." This is a sandbag, of the size and weight of a heavy man, suspended from what looks very much like a bar of a goal. First the men have to run, and, jumping from a set take-off, hurtle through the air and tackle the dummy. A pleasant arrangement of iron on the top of the dummy effectively inculcates the golden precept of "tackling low." Bruised and battered, the men are then trotted back to the field for code exercise, in which they have to obey at the instant a hundred orders shrieked at them from various parts of the field. HARD AS XAILS. Such is a sample day's training in a S? Jong course, in which the men are watched by their trainers as a cat watches a mouse; with rigid dieting against which a convict would rebel; and periodical examinations which none but the absolutely fit can survive, until at last the survivors are as hard as prizefighters, "their muscles so trained that a blow which would slay an average man simply bounces off them." One is not surprised to learn that American football, with its elaborate training and equipment, is a very costly game. Yale College, for instance, is said to spend £12,000 on its team, of which sum no less than .£3OOO goes to the head coach alone, who is invariably an old member of the University and an athlete of renown. Under the head coach are second coaches; while each member of the team has his own coach and his own trainer, who never leaves him. The items of this bill, which should oe oE peculiar interest to football readers,, JTH include a sum of £3OO for shoes alone. The American football shoe is made entirely of leather, and laces well up the ankle. Inside it, and attached to it, is a leather anklet which laces tightly over the foot, and is an almost sure preventive of sprained ankles. Uniforms and armor account for just under£looo; and hotel expenses for £I2OO. Twentyfive years ago iale football cost only 2792 dollars a year, less than twice the sum now paid for shoes alone; and less than one-twentieth of the sum now needed to put a team into shape for a championship match. A FORMIDABLE LIST. . The list of supplies for the Yale team also makes interesting reading, for it includes 200 footballs, 189 pairs of stockings, 437 elbow and shoulder yads, 70 sweaters, 87 noseguards, 107 jerseys, 170 underskirts and 107 pairs of shoes—an equipment sufficient, we should have thought, for at least half-a-dozen teams. The lavish expenditure on a game is all

the more remarkable when, it is consiured that some of the players are so poor that they literally have to earn their degrees by the sweat of their brows. Of one such student) a doughty footballer, it is said "he waited at table, raked leaves, shovelled snow, mowed lawns, picked grapes, tended furnaces, rang tine chapel hell, and played a variety of other roles, from canvasser to tram conductor."

That the expenditure is justified, however, is proved by the fact that a year's gate receipts are said to represent the pay of about forty professors of Yale College, and are,, in fact, about double the income from the academic endowment funds." It is no unusual thing for 40,000 or 50,000 people to flock to an inter-College match, many occupying seats which have been literally scrambled for, at prices ranging from the equivalent of one to five pounds.