Page:Association Football and How to Play It (1908) by John Cameron.djvu/24

22

forward line is perhaps a club's chief asset. If the forwards continue to attack, the defence has an easy time, and, as previously mentioned, the best defence is attack. It is not the man who scores that is necessarily the best forward, but to get goals should be the aim of a forward whether he gets the goal himself or leaves a comrade to shoot the ball into the net. From this it will be gathered that a forward should really understand something of the art of goalkeeping, so that he may know how best to defeat the goalkeeper. The object of every forward movement should be to get to the goal by the nearest way possible, eluding the goalie by placing the ball out of his reach. We have all heard of Johnnie Goodall's method in this line. It is a well-known fact that he used to put at tall hat on top of the bar and endeavour to knock it off. In this way he practically put the ball wherever he wanted to, and this was the great secret of his goal-scoring power, which, as I have already remarked, is the chief asset in a forward. While we are on the point of shooting, another thing is to be able to take the ball on the run, which is to say that a forward should shoot without having to