IMPRESSIONS OF WING PLAY
— William Meredith —

I have been asked to write upon a game which has been very dear to me for some years now, and which has given pleasure to countless thousands, who have spent the little leisure they have in these stern competitive days in looking on. It seems to me that I cannot do better than afford spectators a glimpse of the player, as he stands before the public eye, keenly observed, closely followed in his every movement, and the object of varying criticism, just as he may succeed or fail. After this, there may be still room for a discussion of the science of forward play from the standpoint of the extreme winger. The introduction of professionalism has been responsible for many things. It has, for instance, along with the introduction of the Football League, and the League system generally, raised the standard of football, which it is reasonable to believe would never have reached the science it has done but for this. People there are who seem never tired of holding up their hands in pious horror against the payment of the player, and think that there would be enough to provide amateur sport, apart from professionalism. I am not going into this question, because it has been completely answered, in the most convincing way, by the enormous public patronage bestowed upon it. These attendances would never have been possible where there was no guarantee of a full team taking the field, which was often the case in the pre-professional days.

But if professionalism has done this from the point of view of popularising the game, it has done much also in giving the player a status, and with it a responsibility which did not exist previously. There was a time when little was expected of a player, than that he should treat the position merely from the strictly individual point of view of developing his physique, and adding pleasure to his hours of recreation. This is a class of football which still flourishes in many scattered districts, and which can be regarded purely in a recreative light. No one would be so foolish to say anything against it either, but rather would encourage it. But to be fair, it must be agreed that, on the other hand, the players, who play for remuneration, and provide an entertainment for thousands, are fulfilling a worthy calling. There are those who consider the present maximum amount of £4 a week all the year round as altogether too generous a sum for the playing of a match or two within the space of a week. Those who argue, however, have not always placed themselves in a position to ascertain what it is that is required of the professional player at the present time. Let me just throw into prominence some of the sacrifices he has to make and the rules he has to observe, to show that he is not the happy-go-lucky fellow whom, we are told, lounges about the streets, kills time aimlessly, and not always wisely, and who is the idol of folk who allow their enthusiasm to take mistaken channels. In the first place, let me say that in the last dozen years there has been a great change in the character of the paid player. Recognising the fact that the public eye was upon him, and that his work called forth every season more exacting responsibilities, he willingly accepted the position, and we now see him able to take his position in the best of company, and would have no hesitation in asking a lady to take a seat with him in his saloon. Why, it is a fact that Manchester City team on our recent journey to London for the final for the English Cup, surprised the occupants of a station they were leaving by singing, and that too quite musically, "Lead, Kindly Light." The days indeed when hotel proprietors absolutely refused to allow a football team on their premises, owing to such school- boy pranks as emptying the feather beds on to the landing-hall below, or even marching out triumphantly the next morning with the four bed- posts, declaring that as they had paid for their beds they meant to have them, are now incidents of the past. In dress, conduct, and general behaviour I contend that the paid player can well take care of himself, and compares favourably, at any rate, with any other professional sportsman.

The player has not so much time on his hands as many suppose. At most headquarters he is required to present himself for training not later than ten o'clock in the morning. He then begins a course of exercise best fitting him for his work. This is not by any means child's play. It is downright serious application to a set of rules, which are imperatively enforced, and which will vary from the use of heavy clubs and dumb-bells, to twenty minutes' skipping, ball-punching, sprinting, and alternating with an eight or nine miles' walk at a brisk pace. The player has to train himself in other ways, and requires to be proof against temptation to indulge in things which do not make for condition. Every hour of the day almost he lives in an atmosphere which reminds him of nothing else but football; and he finishes the week playing before a great crowd of people, who often expect him to perform more like a machine than a human being subject to pains, aches, and illnesses, to say nothing of some ugly wound which the stud of a boot has opened, but which his pluck and loyalty to his club causes him to forget in his whole-souled desire to secure a victory for his side. If he is married he has to say good-bye to many of the pleasures of home life, and at the festive time of the year, when every one reckons to meet round the family circle, he is probably hundreds of miles away, perhaps shut up in a deserted seaside resort, undergoing "special training" for the purpose of providing entertainment for the more favoured members of society. Add to all this the possible risk of having to stay for weeks in hospital nursing a broken ankle or a dislocated collar-bone, and it must surely be agreed that the life of the professional football player is not quite so gilded an occupation as it might appear.

In recent years there seems to have sprung up a closer criticism of the player as such, and one can now read, as well as listen to, the instructions of well-intentioned people who always know just how a game can be won, and who will recount the exact number of mistakes made on the field of play by every individual player. From spectators the players on the wing are always most ably captained by well-inten- tioned people, who will tell you just how far away is the opposing back, the exact moment to centre, and the easiest way to score from within the confines of the chalk-lines surrounding the corner-flag. The mistake which many of our good critics make is that they do not realise many of the things which make it necessary for the players to do precisely the opposite to what the spectators think should be done. Most players have their own peculiar ideas and methods of going to work. They have made these something of a life study, and the fact that they have proved in the highest sense successful is surely enough to entitle them to play their own game. The very fact that players cannot always do just what they please, that a puff of wind under the ball in a lengthy flight from the wing may mean all the difference between a miss and a hit, a goal or a failure, that a heavy ground causes the ball often to stop where it strikes, whilst a fast one may mean its rivalling a cricket ball for pace, are, with dozens of other varying influences, the spice of the game, causing every match to have that element of uncertainty as to the distribution of the honours, and which explains more than anything else the great popularity which football enjoys. Make men into machines, and convert the pastime into something which will make every result tolerably certain before the match is played, and you would very quickly hear the death-knell of the sport. I believe that the more the position of players on and off the field is studied, the more considerate will be the attitude of the critics, who will be agreed in time, as many are convinced already, that allowing for the fact that nothing but the feet and occasionally the head are allowed to act in the manipulation of the ball, that the science of the game of football will hold its own against almost any other branch of outdoor sport. I have already proved, I think, that our players are not by any means the "unintelligent paid hirelings" which some would have us believe, and in further proof of this let us remember that the successful player requires, if he wishes to make any headway in the game, to be continually thinking out fresh ideas, and developing new movements in the manipulation and control of the ball. I am able to specially write on this phase of the subject, because I regard the outside forward position as the most difficult to fill, and possibly requiring, next to the goalkeeper, a greater display of individual cleverness than any other position. The reason will be at once apparent when it is remembered that the inside player may be some distance away when one starts a run down the field. Then it is that the outside man realises that what he does, in the way of beating down opposition, has to be done alone. Frequently, too, the centre half will execute a sort of flank movement, whilst the full back will operate on the touch-side. Here then we have something like a complete enveloping manoeuvre on the part of the opposing side, and it is with such situations facing one that the real merits of a player are tested to the utmost. It would be obviously impossible to set up a rigid set of rules as to how an outside player can best beat down the attentions of halves and backs. Every fresh change in the placings of the men, and every new circuit of the ball, alters the position of things to such an extent that the mind of the player requires to be continually open to adaptable ideas. But it is safe to say that command of and control over the ball will solve many of the problems which present themselves.

A player is always fairly master of the situation so long as he feels that he has the ball completely under his control. Now it is not necessary that to accomplish this he should have the ball within a few inches of his toe or almost tied to his feet. I admit that a fast man who can reduce the space between himself and the ball, to bring it always within, say, a couple of feet while yet travelling at top speed, will posses a big advantage, but the art of wing play is to have a definite idea of what you intend to do with the ball, presuming things go all right, and also to maintain direct sympathy with the ball, even whilst it is some yards in front of one. The knowledge that is followed with confidence that the ball is always really in possession of the player will carry him through many difficulties. It is the motive power of his energies, the current showing him the shortest and best cut to the goal. It follows that every player who wishes to become at all an expert in the game must have more than one string to his bow. It is the man who can adapt himself to the altered positions and situations, with new and fresh ideas, that succeeds in these strenuously contested football days, for if a player has only one sort of movement on the field, and can only beat his man by a sort of rule of thumb, he will soon find that just as the batsman knows a bowler's weakness, or a bowler remembers what sort of ball will most puzzle the batsman, you can be sure that the defending players will immediately read him like a book, and make him of very little service to his side. 

As to what a wing man should do in the direction of centring or shooting, everything depends upon the position of the players at the time, but it is always advisable to adapt oneself to things as they are found existing. A wing man who never attempts a shot, and who always requires to "shake hands" with the corner-flag before centring, will soon find that he invites far closer attention than he would if he left the defence in complete ignorance whether he intended to shoot, centre, or pass. It is the player of originality and initiative, the man with cool self-possession, who knows just what he can do, and just what he ought not to attempt to do, who can measure up, not only his own speed and capabilities, but those of his opponent to a nicety — this is the type of player who will make his mark. As to centring the ball; here again the wing man requires to use his own common sense and intelligence. For instance, if your forwards are on the small side and the backs tall, it is hardly advisable to send in a high centre; whilst, on the other hand, if your centre, say, is a six-footer, he will have a big advantage in heading through from a ball which is some five feet from the ground. I do not think that the centres which come across, right on a level with the line, are always the best. The protection now given to goalkeepers almost allows him a free hand in fisting out such centres, whilst there is the danger of being given offside, for all referees do not, unfortunately, measure up quite accurately the angle of the ball, or the position of the player, when these close centres come along. A style of play which is coming to the front is for the inside man to make a rapid change to the outside, the latter making a bee-line for goal, and if tackled rapidly transferring to the unattended player who has gone on the wing. This has some advantages, though it may be confusing to the attacking side, as well as tending to slacken the game. There are certain lines laid down in football for each player, according to his position, and these must always be more or less observed, but I am convinced that the more a player makes a study of the game — say as Mr. L. Roose is said to do in the matter of goalkeeping — the more successful he will be. These are the men who will be sure to come to the front in the end, and with our football crowds in turn becoming more observant, and also increasingly intelligent in all points of the game, there seems to be an even greater popularity for football in the future than even in the past.