John Cameron on Training 1908

Wanted: a Wife who will keep Bovril in the house

I’m extremely excited to find that the book written by the man who to me most epitomizes the history of British football is available free online.

John Cameron was a Scot who began his career playing for the great amateur side Queens Park. He went on to star for Everton, then won the FA Cup with Spurs in front of 114,000 people at Crystal Palace. He coached in Germany before World War One and was interned at the Ruhleben camp in Berlin alongside, amongst others, Steve Bloomer.

The whole book is interesting. But you might like to see what Cameron has to say about one area that is perceived above all to have changed since the Edwardian era: training. He doesn’t like drinking or smoking..! ‘Again and again I have watched mere lads of fourteen and fifteen, as well as young men of twenty-five, come on to the cricket and football field smoking those horrible, cheap, inferior ” fags.”‘ There’s no mention of any real skills training in this chapter, although the book has “tips and tricks” aplenty elsewhere in it.

CHAPTER V. Training.

NOT the least important thing about football is the matter of training, and nearly every professional club has a trainer, whose business it is not only to get the men fit, but also to keep them so for eight months. I have spoken to a great many whose work it is to get their men into condition and keep them so, and I find that a great many of them have different methods, but nearly all are agreed that every individual must be taken by himself. The majority of people, however, are not paid players, although, as I have already said, these are largely increasing in number, because year by year we see fresh clubs springing up, besides which every member of an ordinary club should be bound to turn out in as perfect a condition as possible. Many make a practice of walking to and from their work, and this in itself is excellent. When Montague Holbein was training for his Channel swims he used to make a practice of walking from Catford to the City, and also back, a distance of several miles, and this he found very valuable indeed. In the early days of some of the more important clubs a great many of the players who were professionals went to their ordinary occupations all the week and used to play on a Saturday. When West Bromwich Albion, captained by William Bassett, won the English Cup against Preston North End twenty years ago, the Midlanders were all local lads, whose wages totalled about ten pounds a week, while Preston’s pay-list was four times as much. Indeed, men who are regularly at work, especially if it be out of doors and if it taxes one’s bodily powers, need very little training. No one ought to play football unless he has a sound constitution, and every organ in the body must be sound, especially the heart and lungs; it is a game for those who are healthy and vigorous. A good plan is to pursue some exercise during the “close” season, i.e., the summer months. Professionals will tell you that August is their hardest month, a large number of them having done nothing since the end of April. Their muscles have become stiff, and they have probably too much surplus flesh. It is very different where professionals take up first class cricket, and trainers have frequently told me that those professionals and amateurs who play the summer game require little or no preparation, and there are many instances of that. Take, for instance, J. Sharp, the famous Everton forward. He must be getting on in years, and yet. season after season he plays cricket up till the end of August and then turns up at Goodison Park and shows how well he can carry the ball along and whip it into goal, like “a rocket, though not so straight up,” as one great judge has written of him. He has been an International this year. He has done splendid work as a cricketer, and is second on the list of Lancashire averages, and may be described as one of the greatest all-round men in England. Now, in his thirty-first year, he has given evidence that if you keep in condition there is no need to worry about special preparation or anything of the sort. Another instance is E. Needham, the captain of Sheffield United, and perhaps the greatest half- back for many years that we have had. He is now thirty-five, and it is a long time since he played his first International match, and long before he was a cricketer he had made his name as a footballer. He is a tireless worker, as anyone who has watched him with the Sheffield United club knows quite well, and long before his age many men have retired from the game. He has the respect and admiration of everyone, and this year he has come to the front as a cricketer and finished at the head of the Derbyshire averages. The result of his always keeping in condition is that he will probably go on for some years as a great cricketer, and as one career is on the wane the other seems to be beginning. He is great indeed at both games. Two other members of the Sheffield United club have also made their presence felt at the summer game. I refer to the two half-backs, the brothers Wilkinson. W. H., the half-back, has never done better as a cricketer. He is a left- handed batsman, and has made a great advance on anything he has done before, while B. Wilkin- son is a player of some repute. Lewis, of Somerset ; Makepeace, of Lancashire ; Ducat, of Surrey ; Iremonger, of Notts; and Leach and Vincett, of Sussex, are all cricketers who have done splendid work during the summer game, and have turned out footballers perfectly fit at the beginning of the season. Indeed, if you play cricket as it should be played it is magnificent training for football. It is hard work getting fit at the start of the season if you have allowed your muscles to become flabby, while there may be no regular circulation of the blood, and generally the muscles that you require are very lethargic, so the difficulty is with those who do not play tennis or cricket, or go in for rowing or swimming or some other form of active exercise during the summer, that they will have to take up some serious practice. Skipping is good, walking and running, especially short sprinting, while punch-ball exercise and dumbbells may be used. There should be moderation in all things, and one must start carefully at first and increase the amount of training until one feels fit. During the season walking and some practice at kicking, with an occasional sprint, are quite enough to keep the player well. It is quite possible that some may suffer from the tremendous amount of energy that they put into their game. I do not think that those who work indoors, such as clerks and others who are called upon to follow indoor occupation, require more than moderate regular exercise. It is very likely that they will have to do their training after or before business hours, and in the evening brisk walking of a couple of miles, with a sprint of 100 yards four or five times, is a good way of getting rid of superfluous fat, and everyone can do this if he likes, though laziness will often lead some to shield themselves under the excuse, ” They have no time.” One well-known forward, thoroughly conscientious in his training, used to exercise on the Embankment, an excellent plan. Everyone who has to work sitting down should take a morning bath and a little practice with a skipping rope or dumb-bells. The question of diet is of some importance. The game is so strenuous and exhausting that a substantial meal should be taken at least two hours before a match. Many have a beef steak well cooked, with stale bread and vegetables that are well done, always excluding potatoes, and they are able to play right through the game without feeling in any way fatigued. The plainer the food the better. All players are better if they leave alone intoxicants. Needham earnestly advises young players to abstain from them. He says that his experience is that they do not sustain any long continued effort, and their stimulating effect is followed by an invariable depression. From my own observation of players who have abstained and those who have not, I am sure the former have done’far better than the latter. Plenty of Internationals and men whose names are household words are total abstainers. I remember Vivian J. Woodward at a dinner in the football season would neither touch intoxicating drinks nor smoke, and England’s captain knew what he was about. Kirwan, who captained Ireland; John Goodall, one of the props of the game; John Lewis, the famous penalty king; C. Williams, the Brentford and Tottenham goalkeeper; Ducat, of Woolwich Arsenal, are only a few of the total abstainers, and to them I might add R. M. Hawkes, International and the Luton captain. Indeed, if you want to be of the greatest value to your side you may take it from me that you will do better service by leaving alone all sorts of alcohol, and as to smoking, I am quite sure it is thoroughly bad. I see one picture which explains to me why a great deal of the slackness is creeping over our boys. Again and again I have watched mere lads of fourteen and fifteen, as well as young men of twenty-five, come on to the cricket and football field smoking those horrible, cheap, inferior ” fags.” How any captain can allow it is a great mystery to me, because if we are training for a match we always say do not smoke a day or two before, because it interferes with one’s staying powers. Yet I have seen boys come down to Tottenham smoking all the way from London, all the time they are changing, and actually come from the dressing room with cigarettes, and blow and blow away right to the moment of kicking off. Not content with that, they get through some more cigarettes at the interval, and then wonder why they are tired before the match is over. I have often begged of our youths if they wish to be athletes to remember that it means a certain amount of self- denial, and if they want to do their best for their side they will take this matter seriously to heart and remember that smoking and drinking intoxicants make one unfit rather than otherwise. I do not think that the ordinary player need think about special training, but if, on the other hand, stale- ness comes to him a complete rest is necessary. When you are overworked at the end of a long season your feet will seem heavy and your kicking will be uncertain, while you will fall and stumble about. This is the time to retire and make room for someone else. With a little care you will gain the necessary freshness, and you will be able to tell when you have got that, because you will be anxious to play the game.

CHAPTER V.

Training.

NOT the least important thing about football is

the matter of training, and nearly every profes-

sional club has a trainer, whose business it is not

only to get the men fit, but also to keep them so

for eight months. I have spoken to a great many

whose work it is to get their men into condition

and keep them so, and I find that a great many of

them have different methods, but nearly all are

agreed that every individual must be taken by him-

self. The majority of people, however, are not

paid players, although, as I have already said,

these are largely increasing in number, because

year by year we see fresh clubs spring-

ing up, besides which every member of an

ordinary club should be bound to turn out in

as perfect a condition as possible. Many make a

practice of walking to and from their work, and

this in itself is excellent. When Montague Holbein

was training for his Channel swims he used to

make a practice of walking from Catford to the

City, and also back, a distance of several miles,

and this he found very valuable indeed. In the

early days of some of the more important clubs a

great many of the players who were professionals

went to their ordinary occupations all the week and

used to play on a Saturday. When West Brom-

wich Albion, captained by William Bassett, won

the English Cup against Preston North End

twenty years ago, the Midlanders were all local

lads, whose wages totalled about ten pounds a week,

while Preston’s pay-list was four times as much.

Indeed, men who are regularly at work, especially

if it be out of doors and if it taxes one’s bodily

powers, need very little training. No one ought to

play football unless he has a sound constitution, and

every organ in the body must be sound, especially

the heart and lungs; it is a game for those who

are healthy and vigorous. A good plan is to

pursue some exercise during the “close” season,

i.e., the summer months. Professionals will

tell you that August is their hardest month,

a large number of them having done no-

thing since the end of April. Their muscles

have become stiff, and they have probably too

much surplus flesh. It is very different where

professionals take up first class cricket, and trainers

have frequently told me that those professionals

and amateurs who play the summer game require

little or no preparation, and there are many in-

stances of that. Take, for instance, J. Sharp, the

famous Everton forward. He must be getting on

in years, and yet. season after season he plays

cricket up till the end of August and then turns

up at Goodison Park and shows how well he

can carry the ball along and whip it into goal,

like “a rocket, though not so straight up,” as one

great judge has written of him. He has been an

International this year. He has done splendid

work as a cricketer, and is second on the list of

Lancashire averages, and may be described as one

of the greatest all-round men in England. Now,

in his thirty-first year, he has given evidence that

if you keep in condition there is no need to worry

about special preparation or anything of the sort.

Another instance is E. Needham, the captain of

Sheffield United, and perhaps the greatest half-

back for many years that we have had. He is now

thirty-five, and it is a long time since he played

his first International match, and long before he

was a cricketer he had made his name as a foot-

baller. He is a tireless worker, as anyone who

has watched him with the Sheffield United club

knows quite well, and long before his age many

men have retired from the game. He has the

respect and admiration of everyone, and this year

he has come to the front as a cricketer and finished

at the head of the Derbyshire averages. The

result of his always keeping in condition is that

he will probably go on for some years as a great

cricketer, and as one career is on the wane the other

seems to be beginning. He is great indeed at

both games. Two other members of the Sheffield

United club have also made their presence felt at

the summer game. I refer to the two half-backs,

the brothers Wilkinson. W. H., the half-back,

has never done better as a cricketer. He is a left-

handed batsman, and has made a great advance

on anything he has done before, while B. Wilkin-

son is a player of some repute. Lewis, of Somer-

set ; Makepeace, of Lancashire ; Ducat, of Surrey ;

Iremonger, of Notts; and Leach and Vincett, of

Sussex, are all cricketers who have done splendid

work during the summer game, and have turned

out footballers perfectly fit at the beginning of

the season. Indeed, if you play cricket as it should

be played it is magnificent training for football.

It is hard work getting fit at the start of the season

if you have allowed your muscles to become

flabby, while there may be no regular circulation

of the blood, and generally the muscles that you

require are very lethargic, so the difficulty is with

those who do not play tennis or cricket, or go in

for rowing or swimming or some other form of

active exercise during the summer, that they will

have to take up some serious practice. Skipping

is good, walking and running, especially short

sprinting, while punch-ball exercise and dumb-

bells may be used. There should be moderation in

all things, and one must start carefully at first and

increase thre amount of training until one feels fit.

During the season walking and some practice at

kicking, with an occasional sprint, are quite

enough to keep the player well. It is quite pos-

sible that some may suffer from the tremendous

amount of energy that they put into their game. I

do not think that those who work indoors, such as

clerks and others who are called upon to follow in-

door occupation, require more than moderate

regular exercise. It is very likely that they will

have to do their training after or before business

hours, and in the evening brisk walking of a

couple of miles, with a sprint of 100 yards four

or five times, is a good way of getting rid

of superfluous fat, and everyone can do this if he

likes, though laziness will often lead some to shield

themselves under the excuse, ” They have no

time.” One well-known forward, thoroughly

conscientious in his training, used to exercise on

the Embankment, an excellent plan. Everyone

who has to work sitting down should take a morn-

ing bath and a little practice with a skipping rope

or dumb-bells. The question of diet is of some

importance. The game is so strenuous and ex-

hausting that a substantial meal should be taken

at least two hours before a match. Many have a

beef steak well cooked, with stale bread and vege-

tables that are well done, always excluding

potatoes, and they are able to play right through

the game without feeling in any way fatigued.

The plainer the food the better. All players are

better if they leave alone intoxicants. Needham

earnestly advises young players to abstain from

them. He says that his experience is that they do

not sustain any long continued effort, and their

stimulating effect is followed by an invariable

depression. From my own observation of players

who have abstained and those who have not, I am

sure the former have done’far better than the latter.

Plenty of Internationals and men whose names are

household words are total abstainers. I remember

Vivian J. Woodward at a dinner in the football

season would neither touch intoxicating drinks nor

smoke, and England’s captain knew what he was

about. Kirwan, who captained Ireland; John

Goodall, one of the props of the game; John

Lewis, the famous penalty king; C. Williams, the

Brentford and Tottenham goalkeeper; Ducat, of

Woolwich Arsenal, are only a few of the total ab-

stainers, and to them I might add R. M. Hawkes,

International and the Luton captain. Indeed, if

you want to be of the greatest value to your side

you may take it from me that you will do better

service by leaving alone all sorts of alcohol, and as

to smoking, I am quite sure it is thoroughly bad.

I see one picture which explains to me why a great

deal of the slackness is creeping over our boys.

Again and again I have watched mere lads of

fourteen and fifteen, as well as young men of

twenty-five, come on to the cricket and football

field smoking those horrible, cheap, inferior

” fags.” How any captain can allow it is a great

mystery to me, because if we are training for a match

we always say do not smoke a day or two before,

because it interferes with one’s staying powers.

Yet I have seen boys come down to Tottenham

smoking all the way from London, all -the time

they are changing, and actually come from the

dressing room with cigarettes, and blow and blow

away right to the moment of kicking off. Not

content with that, they get through some more

cigarettes at the interval, and then wonder why they

are tired before the match is over. I have often

begged of our youths if they wish to be athletes to

remember that it means a certain amount of self-

denial, and if they want to do their best for their

side they will take this matter seriously to heart

and remember that smoking and drinking intoxi-

cants make one unfit rather than otherwise. I do

not think that the ordinary player need think about

special training, but if, on the other hand, stale-

ness comes to him a complete rest is necessary.

When you are overworked at the end of a long

season your feet will seem heavy and your kicking

will be uncertain, while you will fall and stumble

about. This is the time to retire and make room

for someone else. With a little care you will gain

the necessary freshness, and you will be able to

tell when you have got that, because you will be

anxious to play the gameCHAPTER V.

Training.

NOT the least important thing about football is

the matter of training, and nearly every profes-

sional club has a trainer, whose business it is not

only to get the men fit, but also to keep them so

for eight months. I have spoken to a great many

whose work it is to get their men into condition

and keep them so, and I find that a great many of

them have different methods, but nearly all are

agreed that every individual must be taken by him-

self. The majority of people, however, are not

paid players, although, as I have already said,

these are largely increasing in number, because

year by year we see fresh clubs spring-

ing up, besides which every member of an

ordinary club should be bound to turn out in

as perfect a condition as possible. Many make a

practice of walking to and from their work, and

this in itself is excellent. When Montague Holbein

was training for his Channel swims he used to

make a practice of walking from Catford to the

City, and also back, a distance of several miles,

and this he found very valuable indeed. In the

early days of some of the more important clubs a

great many of the players who were professionals

went to their ordinary occupations all the week and

used to play on a Saturday. When West Brom-

wich Albion, captained by William Bassett, won

the English Cup against Preston North End

twenty years ago, the Midlanders were all local

lads, whose wages totalled about ten pounds a week,

while Preston’s pay-list was four times as much.

Indeed, men who are regularly at work, especially

if it be out of doors and if it taxes one’s bodily

powers, need very little training. No one ought to

play football unless he has a sound constitution, and

every organ in the body must be sound, especially

the heart and lungs; it is a game for those who

are healthy and vigorous. A good plan is to

pursue some exercise during the “close” season,

i.e., the summer months. Professionals will

tell you that August is their hardest month,

a large number of them having done no-

thing since the end of April. Their muscles

have become stiff, and they have probably too

much surplus flesh. It is very different where

professionals take up first class cricket, and trainers

have frequently told me that those professionals

and amateurs who play the summer game require

little or no preparation, and there are many in-

stances of that. Take, for instance, J. Sharp, the

famous Everton forward. He must be getting on

in years, and yet. season after season he plays

cricket up till the end of August and then turns

up at Goodison Park and shows how well he

can carry the ball along and whip it into goal,

like “a rocket, though not so straight up,” as one

great judge has written of him. He has been an

International this year. He has done splendid

work as a cricketer, and is second on the list of

Lancashire averages, and may be described as one

of the greatest all-round men in England. Now,

in his thirty-first year, he has given evidence that

if you keep in condition there is no need to worry

about special preparation or anything of the sort.

Another instance is E. Needham, the captain of

Sheffield United, and perhaps the greatest half-

back for many years that we have had. He is now

thirty-five, and it is a long time since he played

his first International match, and long before he

was a cricketer he had made his name as a foot-

baller. He is a tireless worker, as anyone who

has watched him with the Sheffield United club

knows quite well, and long before his age many

men have retired from the game. He has the

respect and admiration of everyone, and this year

he has come to the front as a cricketer and finished

at the head of the Derbyshire averages. The

result of his always keeping in condition is that

he will probably go on for some years as a great

cricketer, and as one career is on the wane the other

seems to be beginning. He is great indeed at

both games. Two other members of the Sheffield

United club have also made their presence felt at

the summer game. I refer to the two half-backs,

the brothers Wilkinson. W. H., the half-back,

has never done better as a cricketer. He is a left-

handed batsman, and has made a great advance

on anything he has done before, while B. Wilkin-

son is a player of some repute. Lewis, of Somer-

set ; Makepeace, of Lancashire ; Ducat, of Surrey ;

Iremonger, of Notts; and Leach and Vincett, of

Sussex, are all cricketers who have done splendid

work during the summer game, and have turned

out footballers perfectly fit at the beginning of

the season. Indeed, if you play cricket as it should

be played it is magnificent training for football.

It is hard work getting fit at the start of the season

if you have allowed your muscles to become

flabby, while there may be no regular circulation

of the blood, and generally the muscles that you

require are very lethargic, so the difficulty is with

those who do not play tennis or cricket, or go in

for rowing or swimming or some other form of

active exercise during the summer, that they will

have to take up some serious practice. Skipping

is good, walking and running, especially short

sprinting, while punch-ball exercise and dumb-

bells may be used. There should be moderation in

all things, and one must start carefully at first and

increase thre amount of training until one feels fit.

During the season walking and some practice at

kicking, with an occasional sprint, are quite

enough to keep the player well. It is quite pos-

sible that some may suffer from the tremendous

amount of energy that they put into their game. I

do not think that those who work indoors, such as

clerks and others who are called upon to follow in-

door occupation, require more than moderate

regular exercise. It is very likely that they will

have to do their training after or before business

hours, and in the evening brisk walking of a

couple of miles, with a sprint of 100 yards four

or five times, is a good way of getting rid

of superfluous fat, and everyone can do this if he

likes, though laziness will often lead some to shield

themselves under the excuse, ” They have no

time.” One well-known forward, thoroughly

conscientious in his training, used to exercise on

the Embankment, an excellent plan. Everyone

who has to work sitting down should take a morn-

ing bath and a little practice with a skipping rope

or dumb-bells. The question of diet is of some

importance. The game is so strenuous and ex-

hausting that a substantial meal should be taken

at least two hours before a match. Many have a

beef steak well cooked, with stale bread and vege-

tables that are well done, always excluding

potatoes, and they are able to play right through

the game without feeling in any way fatigued.

The plainer the food the better. All players are

better if they leave alone intoxicants. Needham

earnestly advises young players to abstain from

them. He says that his experience is that they do

not sustain any long continued effort, and their

stimulating effect is followed by an invariable

depression. From my own observation of players

who have abstained and those who have not, I am

sure the former have done’far better than the latter.

Plenty of Internationals and men whose names are

household words are total abstainers. I remember

Vivian J. Woodward at a dinner in the football

season would neither touch intoxicating drinks nor

smoke, and England’s captain knew what he was

about. Kirwan, who captained Ireland; John

Goodall, one of the props of the game; John

Lewis, the famous penalty king; C. Williams, the

Brentford and Tottenham goalkeeper; Ducat, of

Woolwich Arsenal, are only a few of the total ab-

stainers, and to them I might add R. M. Hawkes,

International and the Luton captain. Indeed, if

you want to be of the greatest value to your side

you may take it from me that you will do better

service by leaving alone all sorts of alcohol, and as

to smoking, I am quite sure it is thoroughly bad.

I see one picture which explains to me why a great

deal of the slackness is creeping over our boys.

Again and again I have watched mere lads of

fourteen and fifteen, as well as young men of

twenty-five, come on to the cricket and football

field smoking those horrible, cheap, inferior

” fags.” How any captain can allow it is a great

mystery to me, because if we are training for a match

we always say do not smoke a day or two before,

because it interferes with one’s staying powers.

Yet I have seen boys come down to Tottenham

smoking all the way from London, all -the time

they are changing, and actually come from the

dressing room with cigarettes, and blow and blow

away right to the moment of kicking off. Not

content with that, they get through some more

cigarettes at the interval, and then wonder why they

are tired before the match is over. I have often

begged of our youths if they wish to be athletes to

remember that it means a certain amount of self-

denial, and if they want to do their best for their

side they will take this matter seriously to heart

and remember that smoking and drinking intoxi-

cants make one unfit rather than otherwise. I do

not think that the ordinary player need think about

special training, but if, on the other hand, stale-

ness comes to him a complete rest is necessary.

When you are overworked at the end of a long

season your feet will seem heavy and your kicking

will be uncertain, while you will fall and stumble

about. This is the time to retire and make room

for someone else. With a little care you will gain

the necessary freshness, and you will be able to

tell when you have got that, because you will be

anxious to play the game.

Kinnaird

Verifying My Sources

I don’t know whether the village of Kinnaird (a little way south of Pitlochry and not where the AA Road Map 2006 puts it) is anything to do with Lord Alfred Kinnaird, late ragged-school teacher and President of the Football Association. But as I could combine getting this shot with avoiding the A9 roadworks tailback, I wasn’t going to care.

Although I could have done without the group of walkers at the roadside who stifled giggles as we drew up, got out, took the picture, then drove off again.

Arthur Kinnaird and the Future of Football: 1918

Arthur Kinnaird

The Field, that cozy, unselfish country gentleman’s magazine, bore the travails of 1918 well. Most of its sports reporting – and it covered association football with a generous spirit – was about dead and wounded friends, and now influenza had come in to interrupt what little real sport was still going on. Its correspondents kept a brave face from Front and hospital. War’s end caught the Field by surprise. It greeted it with relief and unsentimental sorrow.

The main non-country sports it followed – association football, rugby union, northern union rugby, cricket, tennis and golf – reacted to peace within days. Cricket’s thinkers celebrated daylight saving time and proposed an earlier start and later finish to the day’s play. Rugby union men had played with northern union men in the war and didn’t want to split off again – could an amnesty be offered to the professionals?

In the Field, the future was debated week-by-week through November. The spirit across the sports was open, optimistic: time to make a fresh start.

Not so football. The Field‘s report of a meeting of FA luminaries held on 12th November 1918 and published in their last issue of the month (the Field was a weekly back then) is shocking. If this is anything to go by, the FA planned for nothing less than the deliberate, systematic wrecking of the professional game, a coup that would win round ball dominance back for the amateurs, the Universities and the Public School Men.

Of the names present, only Arthur Kinnaird, FA President since 1890, could claim any deeper reason for wanting any such thing. He was an old man by 1918, with not long left to live. But in his youth he’d ignored his inherited wealth and all it offered to teach in ragged schools in the East End of typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, hunger and poverty. He’d founded the London Polytechnic. He backed and funded an endless stream of organisations that fought directly against the worst sides to Victorian urban life. Football was at the heart of his work – he saw it as the tool his father (Lord Shaftesbury’s right-hand man) hadn’t had. Instead of empty speeches and moralising, sport. Instead of urging, pointlessly,  continence and abstinence, here, Kinnaird saw, was a fantastic pastime that led automatically on to all of those things, and threw in life purpose, teamwork, leadership and courage to boot. Everywhere he went, he started teams. He’d even turn out for his London Polytechnic from time to time.

And bit by bit, as the Victorian era wore on, he lost his wonderful sport to northern brewers, factory owners, gambling syndicates, the financial corruption and partizanship of the growing professional game. He’d had to deal with crowd riots, drug scandals, religious sectarianism and the chicanery of football chairmen. He might have felt, late in life, that the Great War had given one last chance for association football to fulfil its early promise.

His colleagues Clegg and Wreford-Brown, on the other hand, were simply roaring snobs who cared nothing for urban people. Clegg had always hated and opposed professionalism – and drinking, and smoking: how he must have enjoyed match days. Wreford-Brown had already founded and seen fall the Amateur Football Association in pre-War days. Steve Bloomer remembered him as England’s amateur playing captain, refusing to acknowledge his team mates on the train and then taking a gold sovereign out from inside his shorts to press upon each professional goalscorer as the game progressed.

Here are their bullet-points. Remember, this is 1918: FA Cup Finals have already attracted crowds of 120,000. Old Trafford and Goodison Park and Stamford Bridge loom high over their neighbourhoods. Billy Meredith is a national star in his mid-40s.

• Players are to work a trade or occupation during the week near to their club, to which their ties are assumed to be permanent barring good reason
• Leagues are to be regionalised – no more national Football League. This is allegedly to increase “local interest” but it would also have served to undermine the Football League as an alternative power to the FA.
• County Associations are to take charge of all of the football in their area.
• Transfers between clubs that are made for tactical playing reasons are to be outlawed. High transfer fees and wages are to end.

It’s not just that this is a scorched earth policy targetting the professional game and everything that had changed since Kinnaird’s last FA Cup Final in 1883. It’s the tone. Try this paragraph for size:

This (the resumption of professionalism post-War) bears on the subject of work because, to render Mr. Clegg’s proposal easy of fulfilment, it is essential that the man should play for a club with headquarters near his employment. This would assist to arouse the local spirit, so valuable in all sport, and help to spread the popularity of the game. It must be remembered in this connection that the FA rules encourage clubs to retain players. Transfers for the express purpose of winning matches to gain points so as to avoid relegation to the second division of the League are forbidden; in fact, there must be good reason for a man leaving his club. It is not easy for a player to shift about. Each competition has its own rules governing players, and these might be more stringent by forbidding a man to assist more than one club in the same league in one season. Encouragement of long agreements between players and clubs would hinder migration and promote a wish for regular employment throughout the week like other folk.

"The professional must be prevented from getting back to the old habit of loafing"

A scheme for district leagues, on the lines of the preliminary competition for the FA Cup would help in the same direction, and, beyond doubt, the increase of local interest would prove beneficial for all concerned. To do away with the huge transfer fees and to induce the players to utilise the bulk of their time properly are the great objects in view; both may be achieved by helping men to continue to work as they have done during the war. The professional must be prevented from getting back to the old habit of loafing. It cannot be necessary to devote the whole week to preparation for an hour and a half on the football field.

It’s that use of the words “man” and “men” – you can feel the degrading stress being put upon it, as though a separate, lesser species is being discussed. That’s Herbert Chapman they’re talking about there – and Meredith – and Walter Tull (a British officer, mentioned in dispatches and killed at Favreuil only five months earlier).

Whose voice is it that we’re hearing? The article is credited to one “Hubert Preston” – most probably the journalist who ran Wisden for half a century. But Preston loved soccer and reported on professional matches throughout his career. I don’t think he’s doing any more here than channeling Clegg and Wreford-Brown. Why not Kinnaird? Because of Kinnaird’s past, which was that of a genuinely great and generous man, and because the only direct quotation is Kinnaird’s, a humorous reflection on the armistice – “the atmosphere was different from that expected when the meeting was called.”

Well, indeed.

The Future of County Cricket

One of the many subjects that come up for debate whenever the Ashes begin slipping away from England is the utility of the County Cricket set-up. Can it produce Test-level cricketers in sufficient numbers, does it work for its audience, is it dying? And all this in the reformed County set-up, one in which Mark Ramprakash’s great season can be devalued because fate has dealt him a Tommy Lawton.

In the background of many cricketing minds, the summers of 1890-1914 stand glorious and reproachful. All those white wooden stands full of hats, drink and cigars; all those scorebooks full of English runs and Ranjitsinhji flicking  one off his wrists in the middle. Of course he was; he was a prince, and W.G. was still alive.

Even then, though, not everyone was happy, and the question arises as to whether the County system emerged at once too early and too late. Too early to learn from the experiences of the Football League and to base itself on cities and not shires – too late to compete with winter sports on an equal basis.

Reform was under discussion even before war came – as you read this extract from the inevitable Penny Illustrated Paper keep the Twenty20 experience in mind.

That action shot at the top of the page, by the way, which headlines the cricket piece as oddly in the PIP as it does here, was a commonplace by 1913. The days of the Illustrated London News’ artists were close to over by that stage, earlier, I suspect, than many think. I wish I knew where the plates for that kind of thing ended up. Earlier this year, I had a review copy of 1905’s The Men Who Made Association Football in my hands at an Edinburgh bookfair – with the original plates – not photogravure, the original prints themselves clear, clean and fresh.

I didn’t buy it, and I’m still kicking myself. And isn’t that line – this one, “In 1914, the new system would be in order..” – just heartbreaking?

Stefan Szymanski on Simon Kuper and Himself On Money

Co-author of the book behind the article that was the subject of yesterday’s post, Stefan Szymanski, has very kindly taken the time to expand on the subject for those of us yet to receive our copies of his and Simon’s new book. He did so in the comments to the original post, but I felt they deserved a post to themselves:

In the book we don’t explain this is much detail, but I have explained the methodology elsewhere in print- in academic articles and in my now ancient book Winner and Losers: the business strategy of football. Essentially the data is taken from the accounts of football clubs and consists of the total wage spend. So this includes all employees. However, we can be fairly sure that most of the wages of a club are paid to the players. The salaries of players are largely determined contractually before the start of the season- the bonus elements are quite small, especially for the players that cost the big bucks. I even co-authored a paper once that tested whether causality ran from wages to position or from position to wages- the evidence suggested that it went from wages to position.

The point people are making about the 8% is fair enough, but remember the 8% is distributed across all clubs. For example, if every club except one got exactly waht it paid for, then the 8% would all go to one club, whose managers would clearly be geniuses. But in reality most clubs are little above or below the performance line, and so no one is doing much better or worse than expected. I have examined these relationships for English leagues between 1970 and 2007 (before that wages did not explain the variation in performance very well, because the variation in wages was quite small) and the only manager who ever really stood out for me was Brian Clough. I agree that Wenger and Ferguson are great managers, but I think their skill lies in persuading the money men to back them and their investments, rather than getting better results than the resources would justify.

The real sticking point is whether the successful managers are paid so much that their wages are explainign the variation in position. I just don’t think this is credible- managers are generally paid less than the stars, and it is their wages that make up for most of the variation in club wage spending.

Stefan ends by saying that “This might give you more ammunition to disagree, but I hope it clarifies what’s been done”. As I said in my own comments, I myself am not equipped with the kind of statistical knowledge to do more than express a comparatively unfounded opinion, but I know that those of you who do have a command of this area will find this additional information well worth having.

Many thanks again, Professor Szymanski.

The Best New Resource in Years

Those of us old enough to remember the Times website going down under the pressure of releasing its archive to RBKC will love this:

http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs/

The First Recorded Sound

Some of you may remember that 1860 version of Clare de la Lune getting Charlotte Green into all kinds of trouble last year. The people behind that restoration, First Sounds,  are still very much at work, and now they’ve pushed the likely date for the first recording of sound back to 1857.

That’s not on their website yet, but there is an 1859 recording of an English sports journalist lamenting the international side’s lack of passion and commitment. Well, alright: it’s actually of a tuning fork.

More information here and…

..here:

UPDATE:

Edison’s 1878 recording of the New York Elevated Railroad.

GHOULISH UPDATE:

An 1862 tuning fork recording, using a dead human’s eardrum as a membrane. We’re an interesting species, aren’t we?

Studs Terkel

I’m not one for heroes, but there are those whom I admire, and some of them threatened to go on for ever. There aren’t many who can shock, depress and upset you by dying at the age of 96.

“Hard Times” was always my favourite of his, and of that, the interview with Jerome Zerbe. You can hear all of his interviews in (Realplayer, I’m afraid) audio here.

British Movietone Archive Now Free Online

A sleepless night, not helped at all by the discovery that the entire British Movietone film archive is available to view free online.

British Movietone were/are a newsreel company, competitors to Pathe News whose archive is already online.

Naturally this means that the amount of historical football clips available on the net has pretty much doubled immediately – the pre-WW1 stuff is particularly good, and there is what amounts to near full coverage of the great 46-48 England team, who were poorly served before.

Start with England v Scotland 1930 – with sound, but no commentary.