Athletics and Football (extract)

ATHLETIC SPORTS IN ENGLAND 53 one another, without being compelled to mix with professional runners.' The newly formed Amateur Athletic Club held a championship meeting in the spring of 1866, which was a conspicuous success,and this was the first of the long series whichare still being continued under the management of the Amateur Athletic Association. The intention of the founders of the Amateur Athletic Club was no doubt to place their club in the same position with athletes as the M.C.C. stood to cricketers, and the design at first seemed to promise well,for the championship meetings were very successful, and in two years' time the club opened a splendid running ground for amateurs at Lillie Bridge,which immediatelybecame the head­ quarters of amateur athletics. The active athletes, however, continued to ally themselves more with the L.A.C. than the A.A.C.,and the latter club soon ceased to hold any meetings but the championship. It is hardly necessary, however, to pursue the history of athletics since the year 1866. By that year sports had been instituted in most of the large provincial townsas well as in many rural districts. 'The Athlete,' a record published in 1867, givesan account of nearly a hundred meetings held in England, and the same publication for the ensuing year shows that the number had then swelled to nearly a hundred and fifty. The progress of amateur athletics has since been rapid and continuous, and there is now hardly a single town through­ out the country which does not have its annual athletic meeting. But by the year 1866 amateur athletics had definitely taken their present form, and though clubs have waxed and waned, and popular favourhas ebbed and flowedat intervals,a genera­ tion of Englishmen has recreated itself with athletic sports in the same shape. The system of sports which had its growthin England has been successfullytransplanted not only to Canada, Australia,and other British colonies, but to the United States ; and it is now no rare event to find Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Americans,and colonists competing together in the championship meetings of the Old Country.