Football

.rVE FORM 4 TION 0P THE ASSO CIA TION.
9
years of discretion would play the game, and that, in con-
sequence, it would be entirely relinquished to schoolboys.
Mr. Campbell's counterblast in favour of hacking was not
lacking in force, and it may be interesting to reproduce his
arguments verbatim.
"Hackin
g
," he said, "was the true football game, and if
you looked into the Winchester records you would find that
in former years men were so wounded, tha,: two of them were
actually carried off the field, and they allowed two others to
occupy their places and finish the game. Lately, however,
the game had become more civilized than that state of
things, which certainly was to a certain extent brutal. As
to not liking hacking as at present carried on, he thought
they had no business to draw up such a rule at Cambridge,
and that it savoured far more of the feelings of those who
liked their pipes and grog or schnaps more than the manly
game of football. He was of opinion that the reason why
they objected to hacking was because too many of the
members of the clubs began late in life, and were too old
for that spirit of the game which is so fully entered into at
the public schools and by public schoolmen in after-life.
If you did away with hacking, he foretold that all the
courage and pluck of the game would be done away with;
and lie finally created great amusement by suggesting that
lie would bring over a lot of Frenchmen, who would beat
the exponents of the proposed code with a week's practice."
Mr. Campbell's realistic feature of the delights of hacking,
however, did not seem to have any appreciable effect; and,
indeed, the rule providing a penalty for its practice was
carried by thirteen to four.
Intimation had meanwhile been given by those represent-
ing the non-contents that,
in
the event of the rejection of
the principle of hackin&, th.y Blackheath party would be