as essential that the meeting should have august patronage and
so the Mayor had been trapped and tamed. On the mere fact that he paid
an annual subscription to the golf club, certain parties built up the
legend that he was a true sportsman, with the true interests of sport in
his soul.

He uttered a few phrases, such as "the manly game," "old associations,"
"bound up with the history of England," "splendid fellows,"
"indomitable pluck," "dogged by misfortune" (indeed, he produced quite
an impression on the rude and grim audience), and then he called upon
Councillor Barlow to make a statement.

Councillor Barlow, on the Mayor's right, was a different kind of man
from the Mayor. He was fifty and iron-grey, with whiskers, but no
moustache; short, stoutish, raspish.

He said nothing about manliness, pluck, history, or Auld Lang Syne.

He said he had given his services as Chairman to the football club for
thirteen years; that he had taken up L2000 worth of shares in the
Company; and that as at that moment the Company's liabilities would
exactly absorb its assets, his L2000 was worth exactly nothing. "You may
say," he said, "I've lost that L2000 in thirteen years. That is, it's
the same as if I'd been steadily paying three pun' a week out of my own
pocket to provide football matches that you chaps wouldn't take the
trouble to go and see. That's the straight of it! What have I got for my
pains? Nothing but worries and these!" (He pointed to his grey hairs.)
"And I'm not alone; there's others; and now I have to come and defend
myself at a public meeting. I'm supposed not to have the best interests
of football at heart. Me and my co-Directors," he proceeded, with even a
rougher raspishness, "have warned the town again and again what would
happen if the matches weren't better patronised. And now it's happened,
and now it's too late, you want to _do_ something! You can't! It's
too late. There's only one thing the matter with first-class football in
Bursley," he concluded, "and it isn't the players. It's the public--it's
yourselves. You're the most craven lot of tom-fools that ever a big
football club had to do with. When we lose a match, what do you do? Do
you come and encourage us next time? No, you stop away, and leave us
fifty or sixty pound out of pocket on a match, just to teach us better!
Do you expect us to win every match? Why, Preston North End itself"--
here he spoke solemnly, of heroes--"Preston North End itself in i