'The best game' says Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the famous author and lecturer, was much impressed with the league football match which he witnessed on Saturday [Richmond vs. Collingwood, VFL Grand Final] and he has the highest opinion of the merits of the Australian game (wrote The Melbourne Herald on Monday).
“I know something about football”, he said, “for I played Rugby for the Edinburgh University and soccer with the Hampshire team. I have also seen the best American football. I consider the Australian game is magnificent, and from the spectacular point of view it is probably the best of them all.”
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“I quite agree”, interpolated Lady Doyle, who is also keenly interested in sport. “The man-handling element in the British game, when the play is fast and the scrums break up, make it an extraordinarily fine game”, Sir Arthur continued,
“but in the Australian game there is such constant movement that it stands by itself. They have developed several points which are quite new to me. One of them is accurate passing by low drop kicking. I think that could be introduced into the English game with very great advantage, for it seems to be faster than any pass by hand. Another point that struck me was the extraordinary accuracy of the screw kicking—that is to say when a man running past the goal kicks a goal at right angles to his own line. I have never seen anything to touch the accuracy of both the punting and drop kicking”.
Keeping the game clean
“I think the free kick system is fine”, said Lady Doyle. “It keeps the game clean”. “You are quite right”, agreed her husband. “A strict enforcement of the rule is a good thing. The men's condition was wonderful, for I should think that it is the most gruelling of any game I have seen, and yet the players appeared to be as fresh in the last quarter as they were in the first, and they were playing with just as much vigour. If the Australian cricket is as good as the Australian football, then our fellows will have a tough task before them.
“I was delighted to meet Mr H. C. A. Harrison, who, I believe, is the father of the Australian game”, Sir Arthur concluded, “and I thought it was very sporting of him, as the fastest runner of his day, to introduce the bouncing rule, which robbed him of his advantage. All the same, I should imagine that if there is to be any change in the Australian game it will be in the direction of the elimination of bouncing the ball in order that the fastest man shall get the benefit of his speed. As a stranger I dare not suggest an innovation, but that is how it struck me”.
Footnotes
Title: Best game of all
Author: Register Staff Writer
Publisher: The Register (Adelaide, SA: 1901-1929)
Date: Wednesday, 6 October 1920, p.9 (Article)
Comments
Christopher Riordan 8 September 2014
This is interesting for lots of reasons. One is that the expressed attractions - the dropkick and the torp - are no longer features. The other is the comment re bouncing the ball - I'd never given it any consideration, but should it, too, become redundant?
Terry Logozzo 11 September 2014
The loss of drop kicks, stab kicks and torpedoes to our game is, in my view, to the game's great detriment as a spectacle. The rare big torp we see occasionally today always brings out a big roar from the crowd. (Collingwood supporters have told me the biggest crowd roar they have ever heard at any game occurred about 12 years when Anthony Rocca kicked a monster torp goal in a Preliminary final)
Even though drop kicks go further than drop punts if executed correctly, coaches of course since the 1970's have generally banned them. Fred Hughson of Fitzroy could regularly kick 75 -80 yard drop kicks from fullback in the 1940's. Stab kicks travel faster and at lower trajectory than stab drop punts. Probably the only way to get these kicks back in the game is to have them "compulsory'eg minimum 10 drops and 10 torps each per game -otherwise a team who wins, but doesnt have these minimum of special kicks only gets 2 points, not 4 for winning. Alternatively, teams who do not kick these minimum kicks in a game would have draft selection penalties the following year.
An additional advantage in bringing back these spectacular kicks is that it would encourage the promotion of more players below 180 cm to the game. Generally, shorter players are much better and more accurate kicks than very tall players -we want all heights in our game, but in the last 30 years, shorter players are being phased out. We once regularly had in most teams short pockets, wingmen and rover. Now teams have very few players below 180, and virtually none below 175cm.
Long kicks and contested marks, which have been on a long decline in the last 15 years, would once again become more prominent if these special kicks were reintroduced. We would also have to significantly reduce the interchange to have more open, uncongested play, and kicking to contests (no short kicking, keepings off style play we have today)
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