As the Association game is in full swing in each of the four countries of the United Kingdom, and as each country has its own governing association, the dribblers, like the Rugby Unionists, have found that the only way to avoid disputes is to have a supreme imperial parliament attended by the delegates of each nation. The course of football history certainly seems to show the futility of an attempt to separate the government of our four nationalities, for the players of both games have discovered that with complete independence mutual difficulties and quarrels inevitably arise.

Affiliated to the old National Football Association are nearly thirty district or county associations, most of which have their own cup competitions and by these decide their local championships. Indeed, there is no doubt that as far as local organisation is concerned the Association is more advanced than the Rugby Union. In some centres both games are played, in some only one or other of the two, and the reasons for the choice of the one or the other game are difficult if not impossible to give. While there is Rugby football round Manchester and Liverpool, in the greater part of the rest of Lancashire the Association game is supreme. While the Lancashire mill-hand as a rule plays Association football, his brother in Yorkshire is devoted to the Rugby Union game. Of late years the matches which excite the keenest interest of all, with the exception of the cup ties, are those of the League competition. The chief professional clubs are banded together in a body called the Football League, and each of them plays an in-and-out match with the others during the season. The clubs are divided into two divisions, in much the same way as the counties at cricket are divided into first and second class counties.

The first class clubs play only the first class, and the second class only meet their compeers. From the results of these matches, which go on throughout the whole season, the order of merit is determined, and to the club at the head of the list is awarded the title of the League champions. Strangely enough, it is seldom that the League champions also win the Association Cup

We have said that there are not only the big cup ties, but there are also the minor cup ties of the different local bodies, and that cup ties in one form or another excite the greatest interest amongst spectators, and form the life and soul of the sport as it is carried on at present. What is harder, however, to say is, whether the system of 'cups' is not overdone. There is no doubt that with first-class clubs, whose teams are necessarily engaged in ties from time to time throughout the whole season, the system plays havoc with the genuine club fixtures, which are the foundation of the Rugby Union game. It is of little use for many clubs to arrange a club fixture, as they may always be obliged to send their best team for one or another round of this or that cup tie upon the day fixed. All club fixtures are thus thrown into confusion by the cup ties, and when two good clubs do happen to meet upon an open day for an ordinary club contest, the play is often languid, as each side feels the temptation to say, if beaten, that 'It was not a tie, you see, so it didn't matter.' So far have some leading clubs felt the nuisance and inconvenience of being obliged to travel about to play against all sorts of teams, often at places which are hard to reach, that they do their best to keep aloof from cup ties altogether.

For many years past neither University has entered for the National Cup, and many leading London clubs do not enter for the London Cup. It is certainly a reasonable cause of complaint that the cup system has turned the game into more of a business than a sport. It is of little use, however, to complain of this, as the same movement seems inevitably to occur with every pastime, and even the comfortable tricycle and the social game of lawn tennis become the subjects of championship competitions. The time has long since gone by when the rustic population was contented to confine its own sports to its own village green. The evils consequent upon the prolongation of the National Cup ties were some years ago dealt with and partially remedied by the Football Association. Under the present rules the chief clubs are spared the necessity of playing in many preliminary rounds by the introduction of a new arrangement. Only 32 clubs take part in the competition, this number being made up of the 4 clubs who were left in the 'semi-finals' of the preceding year, 18 clubs selected by the Association, and 10 winners of 'qualifying' competitions in the different districts.

When once the ' qualifying' matches are over very few rounds are required to finish the competition, and even the last pair left in only have to play five matches. Those clubs, therefore, which desire without losing their prestige to hold aloof from too many cup competitions do not have their ordinary club matches so much interfered with as was the case ten years ago.