Welsh Journals

The keen observer will note the light- ness of gait of a footballing community and the heavy-footed marching of those who play no games. Therefore association football even with its professional elevens as leaders is primarily an amateur game, and confers upon the whole community a benefit, the subtle and extensive consequences of which no one can estimate. Why then should the challenge of Association to Rugby in the Principality be a thing that demands serious thought to the end that it be resisted ? The reasons are complexly tangled but worthy of separation. In the first instance Rugby is and can remain the game of the Welshman. The international records of the past twenty years show that the Princi- pality can hold an equal if not superior hand in the game. In the sense that nationality is a community of memories so is Rugby football the national game. The names of the giants are on the lips of the people there are traditions in Rugby that will rouse a crusading fire there is a merit of past achievement that sustains, as nations are upheld by victories. The Association Code in Wales is new and alien and comes in on the back of its popularity elsewhere it is the game of the alien of the valleys whose immigration and de-nationalising tendency is one of the major problems of our country. It is best reported in alien newspapers, and its stiffer en- counters take the Welsh Clubs out of their own borders. The ambition of Cardiff City is, we make no doubt, to join the first division of the English League which can for the immediate present at most accommodate two Welsh Clubs. The centres of interest will con- sequently be in Newcastle, Manchester, London, and the eyes of its followers will be outward and not inward. The inti- mate value of internal rivalry will be absent and the social context of the game will be cosmopolitan. Rugby, on the contrary, will remain as in the past -our inter-Welsh Club game. This perhaps needs explanation in view of the complaints which frequently go to high heaven that the major teams are constantly trekking through the Severn Tunnel or entertaining Sassenach visitors at home. The future tendency will, however, be increasingly inwards and, even should it not be so, the propor- tion of games which are entirely Welsh enormously outweigh the others. The growing power of the minor clubs is the most gracious sign in the Welsh Rugby world of to day. A few seasons ago there were four clubs ahead of all rivals: Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and Llanelly. In a short stretch of time Aberavon, Neath and Pontypool have claimed and received recognition, whilst to-day Penarth and Abertillery are fast making sure of first rank places. A Welsh league with a first division of say a dozen teams, so nearly balanced in strength as the First Division Association Clubs, is not only a very early possibility it is more-almost a certainty and properly conducted ought not to harm the game in itself. The programme which this involves will not, on the other hand, be so onerous as to preclude the maintenance of those friendly English rivalries which have for a long time been popular events in Wales. At this point it will be well to establish criteria of success -or if the word is apt to connote undesirable things-of useful- ness in athleticism. Idealism is not out of place in any sphere of things human, and idealism in football is a thing to establish, fight for, and if need be, fail with, as men have always been prepared to do. Com- mercialism and professionalism stand con-