think, for
they let the players-up manage themselves.

A SCRUMMAGE.

But now look; there is a slight move forward of the School-house
wings; a shout of "Are you ready?" and loud affirmative reply. Old
Brooke takes half a dozen quick steps, and away goes the ball spinning
toward the School goal; seventy yards before it touches ground, and at
no point above twelve or fifteen feet high, a model kick-off; and the
School-house cheer and rush on; the ball is returned, and they meet it
and drive it back amongst the masses of the School already in motion.
Then the two sides close, and you can see nothing for minutes but a
swaying crowd of boys, at one point violently agitated. That is where
the ball is, and there are the keen players to be met, and the glory
and the hard knocks to be got. You hear the dull thud of the ball, and
the shouts of "Off your side," "Down with him," "Put him over,"
"Bravo." This is what we call "a scrummage," gentlemen, and the first
scrummage in a School-house match was no joke in the consulship of
Plancus.[45]

[45] #In the consulship of Plancus#: meaning, perhaps, at the
time when "old Brooke" was leader.

But see! it has broken; the ball is driven out on the School-house
side, and a rush of the School carries it past the School-house
players-up. "Look out in quarters," Brooke's and twenty other voices
ring out. No need to call, though; the School-house captain of
quarters has caught it on the bound, dodges the foremost School-boys
who are heading the rush, and sends it back with a good drop-kick well
into the enemy's country. And then follows rush upon rush, and
scrummage upon scrummage, the ball now driven through into the
School-house quarters, and now into the School goal; for the
School-house have not lost the advantage which the kick-off and a
slight wind gave them at the outset, and are slightly "penning" their
adversaries. You say you don't see much in it all; nothing but a
struggling mass of boys, and a leathern ball, which seems to excite
them all to great fury, as a red rag does a bull. My dear sir, a
battle would look much the same to you, except that the boys would be
men, and the balls iron; but a battle would be worth your looking at,
for all that, and so is a foot-ball match. You can't be expected to
appreciate the delicate strokes of play, the turns by which a game is
lost and won; it takes an old player to do that, but the broad
philosophy of foot-ball you can under