THE BOND OF FOOTBALL.

Gisborne Times, Volume X, Issue 964, 10 August 1903, Page 4

THE BOND OF FOOTBALL.

:(By, “ Tohunga.”),

Wc will say the bond of football, because it is just now that me New, Zealand team is instructing the Australians in the mysteries of the winter game; but what is true o£ football is true of every manly sporl that exercises the muscles end restrains the temper,. The more you think of football the more you thins of those who play at it, whether they belong to your own. particular clan or to any other. If Mr Seddon had the wisdom of Solomon, ne would popularise New, Zealand mutton by subsidising a football team to carry its colors- triumphantly over every, great ground in the North of England and North Britain Let the Maorilanders drive the Sheffielders before them to the war cry of “ Buy our mutton !”as they have been driving, the Sydneysiders and there would be no sale for any other foreign meat from one end of YorKsliire to the other !i t Let, them show the Border Counties the mettle of their pastures on the football field of Melrose at the historic sports gathering, and even the canny Scot would pay, an extra bawbee with equanimity as voluntary tribute to the mutton-breeding conquerors. For the bond of football is greater than the bond of empire. It is strong in the enthusiastic loyalty of youth for the king of games-. By the way, the king of games is the game we ourselves, individually, prefer, be it football or some other-

The .Greeks saw, this, if you remember, For the Olympic games. War ceased and feuds were suspended To them gathered the youth ‘of ail the petty, Greek States, declaring thereby their membership in the great Greek nation and their allegi: ance to the man who could play the game better than all the rest. Only, he must be Greek, of the racial blood royal. He must belong to the people who revered “ the healthy, mind in the healthy body,” as the British peoples do to-day. .That man was crowned victor, crowned with the coveted wreath in the absence of the newspaper crown, [With photographic embellishments, that is the corresponding method of today. The walls of his native city fell to receive the triumphant victor We should give him a special train and ‘take the horses out of his carribut it amounts, to. the papic thing. For the wisdom o£ the Greeks encouraged this national bond of athletic rivalry, and made it the basis of their racial unity. Wc do the same to-day—the frowns of those who would check the .worship of muscle notwithstanding. Talking of joyful weeping, will somebody tell us how it is and why it is, that we Anglo-Saxons have so successfully cultivated the suppression of all manifestations of emo-

lion ? We are not a cold-blooded I race, though our own authorities seem to take a pride in asserting that we are, and though this assertion lias to some extent been acquiesced in by, foreign critics. it isn’t Teutonic, for our German couI sins \impress us as being almost as excitable as Frenchmen. And it I isn’t Puritanism, for one of the national objections to Puritanism lias I been its “ irreverentiai ” display of the emotions in religious exercises ; and farther back than Bannockburn and Hastings we have recorded the bulldog silence that distinguished Saxon fighting. Where. do we get lit ? The Anglo-Saxon blood may Ibe on fire, the Anglo-Saxon heart may be aching, but the Auglo-Sax-on lips must not quiver, and the An- I glo-Saxon cheek must not pale. We I have' actually made it a line of so- I cial demarcation. In gen tie and simple alike, power of self-control is [ the ear-mark of good breeding; to I give unquestioned expression to one’s feelings is everywhere among the I 'Anglo-Saxons considered utterly bad form. 5, . Even the victorious footballer must look as sad as lie can, and the beaten footballer as glad as he can. And you really think very little of Bill Smith if you can tell by the looks of him how the numbers go up. As for weeping with joy for an Olympic I victory—from their cradles boy babies are told that “ pnly girls cry,” and that is the beginning and the end of our philosophy of the emo- I

I tions. ,Yet, ; oh, the aching and the dancing, the passioning and the hoping 'and the despairing of the scarlet blooded heart that throbs and beats under the mask-like 'Anglo-Saxon face ! But where did we get the mask ? Somebody, has whispered that in the forgotten past we were shown the head of Medusa for our I national sins. I And wliat lias this to do with the I bond of football ?■ Nothing much. Excepting that we really do take •football as seriously as we seem to, and that this—the weepful Greeks I being now all dead—is what makes I all Anglo-Saxons understand one another as no other nation possibly can. In the Latin countries, the I wondering natives gaze in bewilder-1 ment at the cricket matches and football matches of the Anglo-Amer-

ican residents, and remark to one another upon the various lunacies of the “ loco ” Englishmen, who run I 'about after a ball when they could I s it still or pay others to run about I for them. But those to the manner I born never wonder. They gaze ad- I miringly at the victors, and always I consider that they, could give miany, I valuable points* to the vanquished. And they know, as we all know, as I the Greeks knew, that in the suite of athletics the rising generation is I learning how to take hard knocks, aod I ! how to knock back without malice, but I with iron muscles and sound judgment in I the fiercer battle of the world, Those I who know that have between them the I bond of the common conception that springs from common ancestry, common ideals, common ambitions, and common I difficulties. . . I For as Scott sang, who often and often must have watched by Gala Water the I Borderers flocking to the mimic battle- j ground of Melrose, and who knew so well I that in America and in India and on European marches, and on oceanic raids, the lesson they were learning would prove I its worth: . , , So, strip, lads, and to it, though sharp be | the weather. .. I And if, by mischance, you should I happen to fall, jG There are worse things m life than a I tumble on heather, And life is itself but a game of football. I —N.Z. Herald. I

The Shall of Persia is ' becoming Anglicised. He has but sixty wives, His predecessor had seventeen hundred. ’ : i