The Waikato Times. THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 1877.

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 779, 14 June 1877, Page 2

The Waikato Times.

THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 1877.

Equal and exact justice to all men, Of whatever, state or persuasion, religious or political # # # # # , Here. shall the Presi the People's right maintain, Una wed by influence and unhribed by gai

The late melancholy football accident has very naturally, and especially in the case of parents, caused a revulsion of feeling with respect to a game which, played as it is, may beatattended with such sad results. Fatal accidents J afc football are not of common occurrence, it is true, but many serious injuries are received, an account of which never meets the public eye. But this, we maintain, is no argument against the practise of football playing, but only against the manner in which it is played. If all sports which are attended with occasional accident to life and limb were interdicted, we might say good-bye to every manly outdoor amusement. Hunting, steeplechasing, boating, skating, .shooting, and even cricket, too, would have to be abandoned] and anxious mothers and sisters, to be consistent, must themselves forswear the use of their .rinking skates. Manifestly such a would be the redudio ad absurdum of arguments against the continuance of our national sports. Yet it is what, in the first burst of feeling,' wft are hearing from many sensible people. And it is to be regretted that it shoulcl be so, for amendment lies, not in recourse to so extreme a measure—which, of the very nature of thing*, must fall through—but in taking such a middle course as will leave the game with full room for the display of pluck, muscle, and activity, but eliminate from it what even its warmest advocates must admit, when played by ;//*/; under the Rugby Union Rules, it is chargeable with, namely, an unnecessary tendency to savage personal encounters of brute strength. The game need lose none of its true manliness if something of its extreme roughness be taken away. We are now speaking of the g me as played by men, though even amongst boys, who are more supple and fall lighter, it were well that the rules forbade the present rough and violent play. Indeed, we have evidence of this in the remarks we publish elsewhere from the pen of a writer in the 'Herald.' It is, he states, the custom acquired in the play-grouuds of our public schools which has caused the same men in more advanced life to refuse their adherence to milder and less dangerous rules, and to cling to those under which they first learned and played the gamej but this is certain, that unless a modification of the system of play bo adopted, football in this part of the Colony, at least, will lose much of its popularity,' and be forbidden by parents to many young men and boys. This, indeed, would be to be deplored. It has always been matter of sincere congratulation that, with a more enervating climate in these Colonies I than at home, our younw men have lost nothing of the natural love of Englishmen for hardy and athletic" sports. These have done much to form the' national character, and if they were needed in the mother country, they are ten times more so here. The Duke of Wellington is reported to have said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the Eton play-ground, a remark probably as apocryphal as the celebrated " Up guards and at them." But it is not to form good soldiers that we should advocate the continuance of our national manly exercises. We must look higher than that. The Frenchman cannot understand our rough sports,. but for bravery and endurance in the field he is fully our equal. It is the effect on character which the English national sports have that is their real value. They have done much, very much, to give to Englishmen the honest, blunt," outspoken, self-relying, adventurous character for which he is conspicuous among nations, and to make each Englishman an individual unit, feeling and asserting his individuality and standing upon it in the face of all difiiculties, danger, and opposition. And here lies a great argument for the modification in the rules of football as applied to its practise by men. The' endurance of, and disregard for, danger which the game at present demands can in nowise benefit the man, for his character is already formed, and it becomes simply an objectless and useless risk to life and limb exercised for the mere gratifi*

cation of the exhibition of superior personal strength, or as a vent to an unduly excited exuberant condition of animal spirits. We give elsewhere an extract from a writer contributed to the 'Herald,' said to be an expert and authority in football ; but we very mncli doubt the writer's deductions, that the game is as dangerous under the rules of the Association as under the Rugby Union rules. If this, which we much doubt, be so, then so much the more need for a, now set of rules altogether—a modification of both or either—and this is what it must come to if football is to remain, what we hope and trust it ever may, a standing sport in this and other British communities.

[Since writing the above we see that at the inquest on the late Mr Pilling, witnesses and jury, Coroner and medical men have all joined in condemning the rules of the game as now played, and that, too, in no measured terms.]