Judge — May 21, 1932 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

e Goop deal of attention has been drawn lately to the experiment of playing Rugby Football, or Rug- ger as it is quaintly known around the playing fields of old Brasenose, in some of our Eastern Colleges. Ha vard, Yale and Princeton all have teams this year and in New York se eral independent clubs have organ- ized fifteens which seem to be able to go out there and give them all a pretty good battle. Local sport commentators have been a trifle hazy about it all. Some of the gazettes have been content to pass the whole thing off with a phoney wise crack or two whilst others assigned their fifth string High School basketball reporters to cover the games. The resultant reports in both cases might as well have been left unsaid and were able to the gentle read analysis of Seftor Capablanca’s chess strategy, as written by your not too humble servant. To the average American sport fan the word football means just one thing. To the Californian it may mean anything from a vaude- ville program ‘neath a blazing sun complete with papier maché floats depicting the spirit of El Rancho wine tonic, to a posy-tossing fiesta with ra asides plugging the climatic values of Nature's Solarium. JUDGE JUDGING ™E SPORTS HE game of Rugger owes its in- ception to a kind of free for all kicking binge which was the rage at Rugby School, England, back in the dear dead days of 182: Later on some Victorian Red Grange hit upon the wheeze of grabbing the ball and running with it. From this then what we know as the Warner nd also dollar parking space at the Yale Bowl, skull practice, and accoon coats. The great at ction of the game is the absolute spirit of amateurism at- tached to it. The great teams in Britain are not school and college teams but clubs composed of ex- college stars and others who work in banks, offices and elsewhere. These fellows simply take Saturday afternoon off and without benefit of high priced coaching, fancy equip- ment and palatial stadiums, play the game for the fun they get out of it. Will some Rockne graduate in the house show me a college star in America who is willing to go on play- ing football after graduation unless he has a handsome offer from the Canton All St or somesuch? Maybe you will grasp just how much rugged manhood is needed for the sport when I tell you the follow- ing. Two halves of forty-five min- utes each way are played without a break. The uniform is a thin, long sleeved shirt fashioned in the colors of the team plus flannel shorts and football boots. This skeleton cover- ing makes our own padding, leather helmets, and moleskins seem as anti- quated as King Arthur’ unday-o- to-meeting suit of armour. In addition to this Rugger is played without any time out, substi- heer leaders, and the rest of the frills and foofaraw indigenous to our winter Saturday afternoon in the big outdoors. Injuries are almost unknown. As an old Rugger player of eight years standing I personally witnessed only one serious accident. It happened in (Page 31, please) comicbooks.com