Page:Hockey, Canada's Royal Winter Game.djvu/52

 reference is made, above, to the time when a "dive" is needed. Even if a man knows that an opponent is mean, unfair, this should be but a poor excuse to fear him, because the referee is on the ice for the protection of all the players.

A hockey player must necessarily be strong physically and constitutionally. If his muscles be well developed, well trained, and his constitution weak, so violent a game as this will do him an irreparable injury. Hockey is so fast, so trying on a forward player, who is rushing continually, from the opening to the closing of a match, that, in order to play without out hurting himself, he must be in perfect condition. This condition means both the state of his health, and the condition of his mind and muscles.

Training for the game of hockey is the simplest, perhaps, of any, and consists for the most part in careful practice.

Nothing prepares a player for the opening of a hockey season, so well as a thorough course in gymnastics. This to do properly, it is necessary to make use of every appliance that the gymnasium affords (except the heavy weights), because the game of hockey, calls into play every muscle that a complete gymnasium developes, which is attested to by the stiffness in