THE FORWARD GAME
— Steve Bloomer —

There will always be a division of opinion, I suppose, as to whether we of to-day are playing as effective football as the line of brilliant exponents of former years, such, for instance, as in the palmy days of Preston North End. Some of us, perhaps, are hardly qualified to make comparisons; but we shall all be prepared to admit that there has come over the science of forward play a change which has had a direct influence upon the style of our present-day backs. In the past we had a sudden transference of strictly individual football amongst the forwards to a system in which combination reached a very high standard. There can be little doubt, I think, that the complete understanding which marked the best days of the old North End forwards, followed by the Aston Villa team, when carrying all before it a few years ago, has had some modification in recent years. What this modification has been will be sufficiently indicated in the course of this article. It may, however, be summarised here as a reasonable blending of individualism and collectivism on the part of the forward players.

Let me at the outset, however, urge that a natural inclination towards the game, and an inbred desire to excel in it, is often the secret of real success. From the earliest days, when I commenced to play in a schoolboy team named the Derby Swifts, I was literally boiling over with enthusiasm for the game. Here, then, was a good beginning. My heart was in the game, and it was not long before I learned the glorious art of kicking goals, which has, I am glad to say, remained with me in some measure ever since. Probably because I have seldom aspired to any but the one position I now fill, at inside right, I am of opinion that the examples of men who can play well in several positions are few and far between. It is true that a centre forward may be able to play an effective inside game or an inside forward take the centre with a fair amount of success; but you will find, as a rule, that it is the player who has filled one position, and brought out all his energies and intelligence to the end of playing the game as it is generally understood it should be played by one filling that particular place, who will do best. Specialisation is a great factor in success. Whatever may be said by the small minority of people against the subjection of everything to the scoring of goals, it is clear that the requirements of the spectators are that every player should be imbued with the all-important factor in football, namely, the obtaining of the one distinctive and tangible advantage — goals. Hardly anything will compensate for this. The football may have been very attractive to watch, there may have been many very interesting touches of combination and sparkling examples of individual play, but if it all ends in the other side claiming the goals, it will not count much to the vanquished, and there will be no illuminated certificates issued to the team by the club managers. Whether we like it or no, we have got into the groove that goals are everything, and it is extremely improbable that it will ever be otherwise. At the outset I remarked upon the position of individualism in forward play, but I wish to at once disabuse the minds of any who might suggest that I am undervaluing the importance of combination. A pretty lengthy, and certainly most pleasurable association with International football, ought in itself to make it unnecessary to intervene with this passing explanation. An exclusive individual attack, in any of the classic games played during the season, would at once demonstrate the futility. The Scottish backs, for instance, have such a happy knack of summing up the intentions of a forward, that he might almost throw himself at a stone wall as endeavour to beat down opposition from that quarter single-handed. Again, if proof were needed to show the value of combination in forward play in these big games, it is one of the accepted drawbacks of both teams that, whereas the ordinary club team will have an admirable understanding through playing together week by week, the players selected for International work may possibly have never played with each other previously. The result is often seen in a disjointed attack, and in the football shown all round being rather below what would be witnessed between two of the best clubs of the respective countries. This is so much the case, that it has been more than once suggested that we should do better if we had the whole forward line of our best season's club selected en bloc for Internationals, though the exigencies of League football would, of course, make this course impracticable. 

Dealing as I am with forward play, it is not the function of this article to say much of the defence; but I would like to say here that we hardly, in my opinion, estimate at its full value always the effective combination between the backs and halves and the front line. Yet a great amount of unnecessary work may be saved by the forwards by skilful placing of the ball on the part of the backs. There is no doubt that our half-backs of to-day are more skilful in this respect than they used to be, for their purpose was, only a few years ago, popularly understood to be the mere breaking up of an attack, and little more. Now, it is not simply a matter of stopping a forward, but of doing something with the ball afterwards which shall lead to a change from the defensive to the aggressive, and this is best understood as accurate passing to the best-placed forward in front of them, or even, when such openings occur, of actually shoot- ing at goal. It would not at all surprise me if, in a very few years, we did not drop some of our conservatism in football and blend the halves to some extent, or at least more than is done at the present time, with the forwards. The value of a half-back line which can grasp the position of a game, and at a time when the forwards are pressing give them close and immediate support, is incalculable. Half-backs who think they are in a sort of compound, and must not on any account assist in an attack, have not grasped, as they should do, one of the chief objects of their position on the field. The fact that the forward is almost continually on the move, suggests at once that he will be greatly helped by anything which will enable him to obtain possession of the ball by a minimum amount of exertion, thus enabling him to put greater energy into the essence of the attack, and shooting with greater force than it would be possible to do if prior to starting his movement he had to come a long way up to his own goal and fight for possession of the ball. It is unnecessary to say, that no matter what may be the position filled by the player in the forward line, there should be no doubt of his being possessed with the first elements of good shooting. Nor ought this to be so exclusively confined to the three inside men. True, the latter will always have greater opportunities, and therefore be expected to score a larger proportion of the goals; but there is nothing so attractive from a spectator's point of view than a finely judged shot from the wing. Moreover, it frequently happens that the wing man has a chance of cutting in at close range, so that the importance of accuracy in shooting will be at once apparent.

And, in the matter of shooting, let it be remarked that self-possession, and an absolute control of oneself, is one of the first principles of ob- taining that possession and control of the ball upon which all successful shooting depends. One cannot conceive of a player of nervous tempera- ment being a success in any position upon the football field, and much less at shooting goals. Instantaneous decision and action is also to be cultivated. A fraction of a second may make all the difference between having a clear sight of goal and being obstructed by two or three players; and in football, as in other things, he who hesitates is lost. Nothing can be said by way of tuition, for everything depends upon the position of the ball and the placing of the men. Goalkeepers, I may note here, almost universally adopt the system of coming as near as possible to the forward who is about to shoot, that is to say, he will leave a big space open to his right if the ball is at an acute angle to his left. The forward, therefore, requires to cultivate the practice of driving in the ball at as fine an angle as possible. The position of the inside wing man has always been looked upon as one which invites the greater amount of skill in the manipulation of the ball. The defence in concentrating itself here will explain why this should be so. A large proportion of shooting has to be made from positions all requiring thinking out, and that, too, without a moment's delay. And this will have had to be led up to by a series of accurate manœuvres, subtle subterfuge, and ability to evolve checkmating problems devised by the opposition, which, in its own department of the game, is just as good as his own.

I noted that a little time ago there was an opinion expressed that there was a growing hesitancy to shoot on the part of forwards generally, and it was asserted that the falling goal average was largely due to this cause. There may or may not have been something in this, for players may well display such hesitancy when they are subjected to the keen criticism which follows an inability to score. It will have to be more freely recognised yet, I think, that it is better to make the effort and fail than to throw away the opportunity by refusing to shoot for fear of missing. A score of things may possibly intervene for making a shot of no effect, and it is the failure of the onlooker to realise what are the difficulties of the man who shoots that causes the unsuccessful forward to almost shrink at times from making the effort. What, it seems to me, is requird more than anything else is an ability on the part of every forward to constantly study how best he can work out a means of out-witting the opposing half-back or back. The forward who has only one particular turn to make, one set of tricks to present, will soon find that they have quickly been learned by others. The principle of adaptability to changing conditions and positions is everything to a forward who has to encounter a brainy and intelligent defence, and he will best succeed whose ingenuity and close command over the ball are equal to adapting themselves to the position of things as they develop, and change, with every passing movements of the game. I can of course speak best upon the position of inside right, for the reason that it has been the one position I have cared to fill, and it seems to me that this may with profit be regarded, on occasions as the position of the players may dictate, as a subsidiary centre forward. Indeed, both the inside wing men might well be regarded as such by the centre and outside men with advantage. We have, I fear, as I have hinted early in this article, come to regard the players too much as fixtures. The arrangement of the present field of play may be all right, indeed the best that we know, but we should not play the game by rule of thumb, but rather by intelligent adaptation of what is best for the time being. 

The idea of a three-man attack, the inside player being for the moment the centre forward, and the possibility of this being changed to either side of the field, suggests the strength of six forwards, and whenever it is tried it has been found to work well. I am convinced that unless our forwards think out these little problems, indicated by the one given above, we shall see a still further diminution in the goals scored, for the reason that we have a better defence than previously, and to be successful the forwards must be equal to evolving effective and increasingly dangerous reprisals to the end of scoring.

It is of course unreasonable to expect that every forward in the front line should possess equal goal-getting merits. It has come to be demonstrated that every team has some one who is generally regarded as more likely to score than others, and hence we have a lot of the play falling upon that particular wing or position. After all, this is only to be expected, but it should also be remembered that these men are marked in more senses than one.

I may conclude this little effort, which claims no literary merit other than that which was learned at an elementary school, by asserting again that goals are what players are on the field for, and only so far as their movements and actions contribute to this end can they be regarded as successful. Football will not lose its hold, or forfeit its attractiveness, so long as the players realise that time is a precious commodity, that the hour and a half allowed for play to be in progress does not permit of a single minute to be wasted, and that everything else should give way to the purpose of the play, namely — the scoring of goals.