Page:Football, The Association Game.djvu/58

 the passing game, had been steadily strengthening their teams by the help of players from the other side of the Tweed. They had been gradually assuming a preponderance in the working of the Association as well; and, in fact, the old order of football had been changing, giving place to new. So far as the game itself went, the result was a benefit rather than a disadvantage to Association football. The Northerners had been at least foremost in the movement which led to the latest defensive formation, the removal of the second centre forward to occupy a position as centre half-back, a post akin to that taken in the Eton game by the flying man. It was realized that this generally was the most responsible place in the field perhaps, if only from the fact that to fill it properly requires a combination of offensive as well as defensive skill, a capacity for attack as well as a power of defence sufficient to keep the opposite forwards at bay, and to prevent them as much as possible from getting within shooting distance of his own goal.

The credit of the introduction of the principle of combination, of which the third half-back was the keystone, belongs, as I have already said, to English players. The movement in reality originated with some of tJie leading amateurs in the South of England. The first team to bring the theory of combination into practice, or at least to carry it out to any degree of perfection, was the Cambridge University eleven some twenty years ago. The practical outcome of the exhibition given by Cambridge in 1883 was a general acknowledgment of the merits of the new formation. In this connection it is worthy of remark that the Scotch players were the most backward in accepting the third half-back, who is now considered an essential to every properly constituted eleven. The improvement in the game generally, the result of the adoption of a policy of combination, was