Page:Football, The Association Game.djvu/39

 {hyphenated word end|pleted|completed}}. It was not long, though, before an attempt was made to evolve something like system out of the rough efforts of these pioneers of Lancashire football. The first result of this organization, I have reason to believe, was the Bolton Wanderers club, which has outlived the many, and some of them excellent, changes through which football has gone during the last quarter of a century, and still remains a power in the land; in fact, one of the most influential combinations of the same kind in the north of England.

But to return to the Cup, which has had such a material effect on the development of the Association. There has been, and still is, a large section, even of the best friends and supporters of football, who take exception to Cup competitions. Their objection of course is, not to the Cup itself, but to its surroundings, or rather to its accompaniments, or to what they are used to call its incidental evils. The good folk who hold these opinions have, it must be admitted, a certain amount of reason to support their arguments. But their policy is at the best one of ultramarine, the bluest of the blue, the policy of Conservatism of the most pronounced type.

Their contention is, in the main, that Cup competitions give rise to an excessive rivalry. According to their notions the stimulus they give is not conducive to the real interests of the game. On the contrary, the desire to secure possession of, or even to gain a.prominent place in the struggle for, the Cup, they impute, introduces an unhealthy feeling, which not only tempts the clubs to make the well-being of the game subservient to their own particular interests, but tends to lower the general standard of morality among those who compete. There could hardly be a more sweeping indictment, and were there any real justifi-