Page:Football, The Association Game.djvu/56

 integral part of a machine which could not work smoothly unless every section was fitted to a nicety and the gear properly adjusted.

So far the reformers were satisfied with a fairly equal distribution of the attack and the defence, and for some time the general practice was to constitute an eleven of six forwards and five backs. As the principle of passing, however, came to be more fully understood, and the attack grew more open, it became more and more evident that the first line of defence was even yet hardly sufficient to cope with the increased rapidity of the game. As the dribbler pure and simple became extinct, and the individual gradually became absorbed in the general mechanism of the side, the selfish player not only grew at first to be an object of distrust, but practically in course of time ceased to have a place in the internal economy of football. The transition, however, from the era of the individual player to the adoption of a constructive combination, gave rise to many interesting experiments of different kinds.

The Queen's Park team were the first to demonstrate the possibilities of combination. In the main they favoured a system of short passing, and it was in a great measure the readiness with which the Scotch players adapted themselves to the new idea that enabled Scotland to show to so much greater advantage in its International matches with England for many years. At the same time the credit of introducing passing must not be ascribed altogether to the Scotchmen. The rules affected by the Sheffield Association gave rise to a loose and disjointed game, which directly encouraged the adoption of a certain kind of passing, and, in fact, the main feature of the general play of Sheffield teams was the transmission of the ball from one player to another, according to their stations, arranged on a definite plan.