WHEN MEN WERE MIGHTY

The award of the varsity "P" to the ten surviving members of the Princeton football team that first played Yale in 1873 recalls the days when football was less a science than a rough and tumble for bewhiskered gentlemen. On the walls of the Union there still hang quaint photographs to testify to the ferocious appearance of these doughty warriors. And the historian is apt to write that the last half of the past century saw the beginning of all things football. But an even more ancient lineage can be traced.

In the year 1721 "A Match at Football" was first published. Its author, Matthew Concanen, was honored by a place in Pope's Dunciad, so that he is best remembered as "a cold, long winded native of the deep". His poem describes a game between the men of Soards and those of Lusk, "adjoyning Baronies in the County of Dublin", and although the teams consisted of but six players a side, the details of play strikingly resemble those of a modern scrimmage. We read: "And now both Bands in close Embraces nmet, And Foot to Foot, and Breast to Breast were set; Now all impatient grapple at the Ball. And Heaps on Heaps in wild Confusion fall."

Those who insist that in "the good old days football was more strenuous sport than today will find ample evidence to support such a view in this first description. Wrestling and tripping were permitted. It being recorded that "careful Terrence . . . . Ran to the Swain and caught his Arm behind; A dextrous Crook about his Leg he wound, And laid the Champion grov'ling on the Ground". As Mr. Williams who reviewed the poem for the London Outlook aptly said, Terrence "would probably be ordered off the field in these degenerate days". Yet these men of Soards and Lusk would probably have fied amazed had a modern gridiron hero stepped on the field with his huge padded shoulders, and his helmet of leather.

But the game has improved in the two hundred years since this famous match. It is doubtful if half a million enthusiasts would gather to watch such a game every Saturday; and it is certain they would rebel against reading sporting news in bad verse.