Page:Football, the Rugby game.djvu/26

16 can do almost as much as a bad captain towards letting even the best of teams go to pieces in the course of a season.

Finally, the more autocratic the captain is the better, provided that he has tact enough to keep on good terms with his men. He must repress sternly all attempts at "gallery" or illegitimate play, and reprimand any player guilty of egregious blunders in the game, though as a general rule he had better reserve his expostulations until the game is over. If the offenders prove incorrigible, he must give their places to others more amenable to instruction.

 

will now take the positions on the field in order, beginning with the last line of defence. Full-back is an essentially defensive post, and probably for that reason good ones are rare. There is undoubtedly more enjoyment to be got out of playing three-quarters than out of watching the game with perhaps very little to do at full-back; and the worst of it is that, the better the team in front of you is, the less you will get to do, because a good team does not call on the last line of defence so often as a weaker one. But for all that the post is one of the utmost importance, even in the best team, since no team can hope to keep its opponents and the ball always in front of their three-quarters; and whenever the full-back is called upon to act, everything depends on him. This fact ought to be sufficient to induce men to take to the post if they have the two necessary