If punting were studied as much as drop-kicking, and made an art of, we are not certain that it would not always be safer for a back to kick this way rather than drop; but as it is the back so often has played on other parts of the field and studied dropping, with the view to dropping goals, that he drops rather than punts, the dropping being certainly neater and prettier to look at. Every back player should learn to punt, for with our weather he may be called upon to play upon a sea of mud with a spongy ball, and on such occasions punting is the only safe course.

Such is, or should be, the back player, but, as we have said, he is and always has been hard to find. Though footballers, like all other English sportsmen, love to earn distinction, of them perhaps more than of any other athletes it may be said, that the motive which draws them to the game is not distinction but purely enjoyment. Hence it is that no one cares to play back regularly if he can help it, and hence also that at schools and colleges on the whole the most capable backs are to be found. Both at schools and colleges the 'back' of the representative team probably has other matches and games, when he can play three-quarter and have his practice in dropping and collaring; while in clubs, which only have a match on Saturday afternoons, the regular back has no such opportunity, and thus is often apt to degenerate. It is no secret that in choosing representative teams the Rugby Union is often hard put to it to find a safe back, and old stagers are played again and again because no fresh man can be discovered who is known to have had sufficient practice to make him trustworthy. It is said that one of the international backs was elected to his place simply on the strength of one brilliant drop-kick, which was all he had to do in the North v. South game.

Be this as it may, backs have often so little work to do that it is hard to gauge their real merits, and we have often thought that a good sound centre three-quarter might well and safely be placed at 'back' when a back is wanted in any team whether of a country, county, or club. Usually the backs of one or the other of the Universities can be relied upon, as the ardent footballer can get three or four matches a week at Oxford or Cambridge. The danger of putting a three-quarters at full back is that he may be unable to resist the temptation to run when he ought to drop, and if he be unable to overcome this weakness he is worse than useless. One of the best sound backs we ever saw play was A. N. Hornby, the cricketer, who played with great judgment and knew the value of punting upon a wet day. Most of the English international backs of late years have come from the Universities, H. B. Tristram and A. S. Taylor for example.

While, however, it is difficult to compare the form of different players, it is easier to compare the different clubs and teams. As our own experience has been chiefly of the Southern teams, the provincial fifteens for various reasons appearing less often in the South than do their brethren of the Association game, we cannot speak so well of the balance of power in the North and Midlands as of the districts nearer London. The feeling amongst Rugby Unionist men is so strongly against cup ties that Yorkshire and the Midlands alone of the great football centres have such a competition. In London, almost since the institution of the game, supremacy has rested mainly between the rival teams of Richmond and Blackheath, and so strong has been the centripetal force which has drawn the chief players of London into one or other of these two clubs, that many of the old and strong clubs such as Ravenscourt Park, the Gipsies, Queen's House, and Walthamstow, first decayed and were then dissolved. Fortunately for sport (for the tendency of all the best players to gravitate towards Richmond or Blackheath can scarcely be considered sound and healthy), the Scottish national feeling has been strong enough to resist the influence, and for the last few years the London Scottish Club has been able to put a team into the field nearly if not quite equal in strength to the other two.

The most interesting matches of the year are those between these three clubs, all of whom meet both the Universities; and occasional matches between these clubs and some of the best visiting teams, such as Bradford or Cardiff, evoke immense interest. The club match is the life and soul of the Rugby game: county matches in some parts of the country fail altogether to bring out representative teams or excite but languid interest. Cup ties are little encouraged by the authorities, and the club remains the essential unit of the football community as far as this game is concerned. In the Association game the club that wins the National Cup' can practically be considered the champion club of the year; but it would scarcely be correct to speak of any championship in the Rugby game. The championship of Yorkshire may perhaps be described as settled by the Yorkshire cup ties, even though several leading clubs hold aloof from this competition. In the Midlands there is also a series of cup ties to decide the local supremacy; in the South the winner of most matches of the five clubs we have named, Oxford University, Cambridge University, Blackheath, Richmond, and London Scottish, could fairly claim to be the best club of the South, and we are far from sure that it is not a good thing to leave the question thus undecided.

It is impossible for these reasons to pick out any one or two clubs as the strongest in England. The most brilliant single team, however, we may say with some safety, was the Oxford University team of 1882 to 1884. In 1883 the Oxford team provided seven of the English fifteen which played against Scotland, and in 1884 eight, or more than half the players - an unexampled achievement.

Each of the four nationalities of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales now puts an international fifteen into the field, which is chosen by its own Union, and these international contests are the chief matches of the year, and the chief aim of every player is to win his international colours. The English Union has a very careful and elaborate system of choosing its players. A series of 'selectional matches' is played throughout the first part of the season. First there are matches between London, the Western Counties and the Midland Counties;. then a team picked from London, the West and Midlands competes against the combined Universities. From these two teams is chosen the team to represent the South in the match North v. South, from such of the players as are qualified to play for the South. The Northern representatives of the committee choose the team to represent the North, making their selection chiefly from the county matches between the different Northern counties. That the Southern system of trial matches works better is tolerably plain from the fact that the large majority of the North v.