Sporting notions of present days and past

4
CHAPTER XII
ROWING AT PUTNEY
IN an admirable article in the
Standard, I
found
an awkward expression used regarding the
Oxford-Cambridge match from Putney to
Mortlake. The writer claims for the contest
its being the cleanest and straightest of all.
With all due respect to him and all concerned,
may I ask whether he might not have given
others a chance? What is the matter with
ordinary amateur boat-pullers as a rule? And,
passing from aquatic sports, are there not
others? Somehow one does not quite like this
typical 'Varsity style of putting the colleges first
and the rest nowhere, and the worst of being
irritated through a remnant of the University
swagger which, happily, generally gets rubbed
off so as to reduce its proprietors to the level of
human beings, is your feeling sort of called upon
to start replies and reprisals. For all these you
must be sorry ; still, it is a little difficult to pass
this sort of thing, which means casting a slur on
all other amateurs. While confessing to being
rubbed the wrong way by this unwelcome
swagger, I must add a compliment on my own
account to the institution which in some of its
developments has been greatly improved. For
instance, coaches long ago left off endeavouring
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