Then, at a signal from the kicker that it is right, it is placed upon the ground, still steadied by the hand or finger of the placer, and instantly kicked by the place-kicker. The reason for this keeping it off the ground until the last instant is that the opponents can charge forward as soon as the ball touches the ground, and hence would surely stop the kick if much time intervened. If the ball goes over the goal it scores as above indicated, and the opponents then take it to the middle of the field for kick-off again, the same as at the beginning of the match. The same result happens by the latest rules if the goal be missed, although formerly the opponents could then only bring it out to the twenty-five yard line.

There is one other issue to be considered at this point, and that is, if the ball be in possession of the defenders of the goal, or if it fall into their hands when thus close to their own goal. Of course they will naturally endeavour, by running or kicking, to free themselves, if possible, from the unpleasant situation that menaces them. Sometimes, however, this becomes impossible, and there is a provision in the rules which gives them an opportunity of relief, at a sacrifice it is true, but scoring less against them than if their opponents should regain possession of the ball and make a touch-down or a goal. A player may at any time kick, pass, or carry the ball across his own goal-line and there touch it down for safety. This, while it scores two points for his opponents, gives his side the privilege of bringing the ball out to the twenty-five yard line and then taking a kick-out, performed like kick-off or any other free kick, except that it must be a drop-kick or a place-kick.

This succession of plays continues for three-quarters of an hour in a regular match. Then intervenes a ten-minute intermission, after which the side which did not have the kick-off at the beginning of the match has possession of the ball for the kick-off at the second three-quarters of an hour. The result of the match is determined by the number of points scored during the two three-quarters, a goal from a touch-down yielding six points, one from the field - that is, without the aid of a touch down - five points; a touch-down from which no goal is kicked gives four, and a safety counts two points for the opponents.

Toward the end of the first year of American Rugby, the latter part of November 1876, a convention was held, and the rules were amended here and there, as the exigencies of the play had indicated.

In the Rugby code, Rules 8 and 9 read as follows: - 'The ball is dead when it rests absolutely montionless on the ground,' and 'A touch-down is made when a player, putting his hand on the ball in touch or in goal, stops it so that it remains dead, or fairly so.' As a touch-down was about the most important point to be achieved in the entire game, the words 'or fairly so' following such a definition as 'absolutely motionless' left much to be desired, and were eventually eliminated by the Americans to save disputes. It is easy even for one not versed in football to appreciate the difficulty under which any referee must labour when interpreting such a clause. Men would go tumbling and rolling over the ball, hitting it with their hands, 'patting it' as the expression had it, and he must decide which among them, if any, made it rest 'absolutely motionless on the ground, or fairly so.' This was but one of the many instances where custom must have guided the English player, but where the American had no guide. 'Off' and 'on-side ' were mysteries naturally; but, with the exception of two rules which seemed to conflict, the new players found less difficulty in interpreting the rules than in enforcing them.

Nearly all of them had been accustomed to the free and easy methods of playing anywhere upon the field they chose, and it took weeks of practice to make them keep behind the ball. Even the first season of Rugby football in America brought out a style of game that would have been laughed at by Englishmen, and it is no wonder that the alterations and amendments to the rules proved necessary. From the time of this first convention up to a convention held in April of 1882, American football legislators amended and added to the rules they had adopted, through no less than a half-dozen annual meetings. During all this time the game had wandered farther and farther from the lines of the English Rugby. But it was in the scrummage, or, as the Americans call it, the scrimmage, that the radical difference between the two methods was most apparent. To go back into the remote history of football, to the days when there was no scrummage, but men struggled for possession of the ball indefinitely, one finds that the first and best reason for the introduction of such a law was to bring about a temporary cessation of the struggle between the holder and the would-be holders, and after this temporary cessation to start the more interesting and better progress of the ball once more in place of the mere struggle for possession.