Page:Football, the Rugby game.djvu/18

8 the Union had such matches played both in the North and in the South, but eventually they were given up in recognition of the fact that they did more harm than good, and their place was taken by the county matches in the North; whilst for the South the Union accepted a proposal which emanated from Oxford in 1881, to play a combined Oxford and Cambridge team against London. A few years later, thanks mainly to the indefatigable perseverance of the late Harry Fox of Wellington, they started a similar match, called London v. Western Counties, after which they now select a joint team to meet the Universities. We have great hopes of seeing a preliminary contest between London and the Midland Counties introduced, and then this series of matches will be fairly complete for the present. It is true that Sutcliffe of Yorkshire and Richards of the Old Leysians were unearthed in trial matches pure and simple, but we hold that selecting committees should be able to discover such men without them.

To return once more to the international matches, Wales v. England was first played in 1880, and after an interval of a year, in which they met a North of England team, the match was made annual, and has produced some excellent contests, though Wales has never yet been nearer to victory than in the last match, which was drawn.

In 1888 England played no international matches; but the Union started a return North v. South, and, in the following season, a match between the Champion County and the Rest of England, both of which proved so successful that they are sure to be retained, even when the international matches are resumed. It is to be hoped that the Champion County match will also have a galvanic effect upon the metropolitan counties, and lead to the adoption of a better-organized system of matches than that now in force. All