Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/83

60 un'," and I can't explain it. It is the same in football. I have seen 20,000 people in Birmingham in a frenzy of excitement when Aston Villa played Everton or West Bromwich Albion, but the Aston Villa Club is and has been recruited from clubs in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Scotland, and the Midlands, and I really believe that only one or two genuine Birmingham men have in some years played for their best eleven. So long as Surrey and Aston Villa are called by their respective names, that is enough. The real inhabitants, the crowd, will be quite satisfied.

It is this intense keenness of crowds that has far-reaching effects—the public want to see their side win, and they pay their money gladly in the hope of having their wish gratified. This same public, however, will not continue their payments if their side instead of winning matches lose them, and nobody knows this better than the gentlemen who form the Committee of the County Club. The Committees are made up of men who are genuine residents of the county which gives its name to the miscellaneous eleven who represent it. They are probably, though