Book of football

ABOUT ITS ORIGIN
5
repeated in any modern retrospective article appear-
ing the day following the close of any football season.
The spirit of the good old game, whether Association
or Rugby, was practically the same four hundred years
ago as it is to-day. Last season the aid of the law
actually was invoked to decide whether or not the
Llanelly team had played foul on one occasion; but of
the coroner, football happily sees and hears next to
nothing, considering the numbers who play.
But a truce to history. It really signifies very little
whether the first football in England was a Dane's
head or was made of a pig's bladder. What does
signify is that from a " bloody and murthering prac-
tice," from a sport which,
selon
Sir Thomas Elyot,
was " nothing but beastlie fury and extreme violence "
we have now got codes of rules for two games the
playing of which by two first-class teams attracts
orderly crowds of spectators numbering from the
iio,000 odd recorded at a Cup Final at the Crystal
Palace
via
the
50,000
odd, the record Rugby crowd
(England v. New Zealand, December 1905, at the
Crystal Palace), down to the handful of friends of the
players who assemble every Saturday afternoon on
any common or open space where goal posts are set up.
Here and there their tempers get the better of a few
players, a fact which only proves that they ought to
play more football than they do. Where serious
trouble arises it is, unfortunately, in nearly every case
the fault of the spectators. There is ample evidence
to prove that the huge crowds which watch professional
Association football have sometimes more than a mere
love for the game to account for their presence. A
financial interest
in
the result cannot make for a happy
1?