Page:Association Football and How to Play It (1908) by John Cameron.djvu/57

Rh would let their boys take football up as the serious business of life. It is easy to start; any club that has paid players will give you a trial, and if you are capable will sign you on at perhaps a few shillings up to a pound a week. The objections are that the career is very short, and may be interrupted or terminated by an accident at any time, and then if you are not master of a trade you are practically ruined. When boys used to come to me and tell me of their wish to join the 'Spurs I always tried to get them to learn some trade first and be master of it, so when necessary they could fall back upon it. This provision for the future is necessary, because you may begin your paid career at seventeen or eighteen, before you have learned a trade, and play on till you are twenty-eight or thirty, and then find you are too old to begin to do so. I have known a number who had made no preparation for the future, and in some cases they are starving. It is one of the painful duties of a secretary's life to have to hear of appeals for help from veterans who have neglected to acquire some trade before taking up football. No club ought to be allowed, for the credit of the game, to sign on any players until they have given evidence that they have a marketable knowledge of some trade or profession. As I have said, many think £4 a week is a nice income; so it is, but how many get it, and how many years does it last? It may be that in the near future you may get as much as you can out of a club, but even then only a very few of the thousands of paid players will get more than they do now. Many a youth, talking of the