An American at Oxford

cricket, and a "cup tie" in Association football. These sports are almost as popular as rowing, and have many excellences which it would be pleasant to point out an

clearly seen in them, and the spirit of English

d American. I replied that from a hasty judgment the English game seemed haphazard and inconsequent. "We don't kill one another, if that's what you mean by 'inconsequent,'" my companion replied; and I soon found that a report that two players had been

nd "interference." In the early days of the American game, many of the most sacred English traditions were unknown, and the wording of the

ed facilities. It soon became necessary in America to line the men up in loose order facing each other, and to forbid violent personal contact until the actual running with the ball should begin. This clearly made

s of the ball. According to the English code, this made our forwards off-side, so that the rule had to be changed to fit the new practice. It then appeared that if the forwards could play ahead of the ball, the b

who could get out of his own way running. I pleaded an attack of rheumatism and ignorance of the game. He said it did not matter. "And I'm half blind," I added. "So am I," he interrupted, "but we'll both be all right in the morning." I said I referred to the fact that I was very near-sigh

. A quarter of an hour to learn to play football! In spite of the captain's predictions of the night before, I was not so sure that he was yet "all right;" so I we

low him, leaving the man who took the ball to be watched by my neighbor, in order that I might be on hand if my man received it again. An American back, when his side is on the defensive, is expected to keep his eye on his vis-à-vis while the ball is being snapped back; but his main duty is to follow the ball. An English back under similar circumstances is expected only to follow his man. If our side happened to heel out the ball from the scrum and one of our three-quarters began to run with it, we were on the offensive, and the other three-quarters and I w

SH RUGBY

alf backs and six three-quarter

tor on the grounds to embarrass me. It is so in almost all English college games-the fellows are more than likely to have

ked beneath the mass, and leaned against the opposing mass of forwards, who were similarly placed. When the two scrums were thoroughly compacted, the umpire tossed the ball on the ground beneath the opposing sets of legs, whereupon both sides began to struggle. The scrum in action looks like a huge tortoise with a sc

k's hands. He passed it quickly to one of my companions at three-quarters, who dodged his man and ran toward the corner of the field. I followed, and just as the full-back collared him he passed the ball to me. Before I had taken three rheumatic strides I had two men hanging at my back; but when they brought me down, the ball was j

assing; and when, just before half-time, a punt came in my direction, I was horrified to see the ball multiply until it looked like a flock of balloons. As luck had it, I singled out

ists, and then heaved, until, when the ball popped out of the scrum, the word came to dissolve. There were absolutely no regular positions; the man who was in the front cen

diagonally, instead of directly, against their opponents. The result is very like what we used to call a revolving wedge, except that, since the ball is carried on the ground, the play eventuates, when successful, in a scattering rush of forwards down the field, dribbling the ball at their feet, just as when the scrum has been cloven. The fourth possibility is that the side that gets the ball amongst its eighteen legs allows it to ooze out behind, or, if its backs are worthy of confidence, purposely heels it out. Thereupon results the play I have already described: one of the half-backs pounces upon it and passes it deftly to th

NG IN

s against the English rules to substitute players and we were still far from sure of winning, I kept to my grunting and shoving. At the end of the game the captain very politely gave me the hoof. T

rgely a matter of form. Men are selected chiefly on their public school reputations or in consequence of good work on a college fifteen. The process of developing players, so familiar to us, is unknown. There is no coaching of any kind, as we understand the word. When a man has learned the game at his public school or in his college, he has learned it for all time, though he will, of course, improve by playing for th

ept the game a tie only by the rarest good fortune. It transpired later that the gayeties of Brighton, whither the team had gone to put the finishing touches on its training, had been too much for it. In an American univers

fteens. As the international teams take little or no practice as a whole, the tendency in the great games is to neglect the finer arts of dribbling and passing in combination-the arts for which each player was severally chosen-and revert to the primitive grunting and shoving. In the great games, accordingly, the team which is man for man inferior as regards the fine points may prevail by

tch, the football limp and the football patch can scarcely be regarded as the final grace of athletic manhood. Willful brutality is all but unknown; the seriousness of being disqualified abets the normal English inclination to play the game like a person of sense and good feeling. The physical effect of the sport is to make men erect, lithe, and sound. And the effect on the nervous system is similar. The worried, drawn featur

development of modern American football has been of astonishing rapidity. Quite often the game of one season has been radically different from the games of all preceding seasons. This cannot continue always, for the number of possi

sion of it, so that our rule is to tackle low and hard, in order to stop the ball sharply, and if possible to jar it out of the runner's grasp. In England, it is still fair play to grab a man by the ankle. This is partly because of the softness of the moist thick E

earth. Any one familiar with the practice of an American eleven will remember the constant cry of the coaches: "Knock your man on the ground! Put him out of the play!" It has been truly eno

d it has always tended, albeit with some excesses, toward an incomparably high degree of skill and strategy. Since American football is still in a state of transition, it is only fair to judge the two games by the norm to which they are severally tending. The Englishman has on the whole subordinated the elements of skill in combination to the pleasantness of the sport, w