Athletics and Football (extract)

ATHLETIC SPORTS IN ENGLAND 'Varsity meeting, may be gathered from some remarks of Sir Richard Webster made at the annual dinner of the London Athletic Club in 1886, when he said that for winning half-a- dozen strangers' races in one year he had received a few pounds in coin, whilethe next year a friendwhose performances had been of the same order receivedabout 40/. worth of prizes from the silversmiths. Soon after i860 these athletic meetings had become a regular feature of school and college life. Trinity College, Dublin, instituted a meeting in 1857, which has since had a continuous existenceand undiminishedpopularity. In England, Rugby School held its first regular meeting in 1856,Winchester in 1857, and Westminster and Charterhouse in 1861. By this latter year all the public schools, as well as the Universities, were holding sports, and there is little doubt that the growth and popularity of the public school system has done much not only to foster but to spread the spirit of athletic competi­ tion throughout the kingdom. Lads who have gained health, pleasure, and reputation from athletic pursuits at school are hardlylikelyto drop their tastes as soon as school is left behind, and it is certain that the athletic movement was largelyaided by the impetus it received from the return of the old public school boys to their homes throughout the country. While, however, the schools were beginning to take up athletic sports in a tentativeway soon after 1850, it is not until more than ten years afterwards that we begin to hear of a class of amateur athletes, as distinguished from professional ' peds,' holding meetings of their own. The pages of ' Bell's Life' during this period occasionally show us that amateurs were matchingthemselves against the professionals, and wefind not only records of amateur matches where the contestants are described as amateurs (as in 1853 one between Mr. Green and Mr. Martin at 150 yards), but also cases of amateur meeting ' ped' (as in the precedingyear the match between Green, 4 the amateur,' and MichaelTurner). The time, however, was get­ ting ripe for amateurs, as wefind even the highly respectable E