SOME ASPECTS OF GAME-CAPTAINCY


To the Game-Captain (of the football variety) the world is peopled by
three classes, firstly the keen and regular player, next the partial
slacker, thirdly, and lastly, the entire, abject and absolute slacker.

Of the first class, the keen and regular player, little need be said.
A keen player is a gem of purest rays serene, and when to his keenness
he adds regularity and punctuality, life ceases to become the mere
hollow blank that it would otherwise become, and joy reigns supreme.

The absolute slacker (to take the worst at once, and have done with
it) needs the pen of a Swift before adequate justice can be done to
his enormities. He is a blot, an excrescence. All those moments which
are not spent in avoiding games (by means of that leave which is
unanimously considered the peculiar property of the French nation) he
uses in concocting ingenious excuses. Armed with these, he faces with
calmness the disgusting curiosity of the Game-Captain, who officiously
desires to know the reason of his non-appearance on the preceding day.
These excuses are of the "had-to-go-and-see-a-man-about-a-dog" type,
and rarely meet with that success for which their author hopes. In the
end he discovers that his chest is weak, or his heart is subject to
palpitations, and he forthwith produces a document to this effect,
signed by a doctor. This has the desirable result of muzzling the
tyrannical Game-Captain, whose sole solace is a look of intense and
withering scorn. But this is seldom fatal, and generally, we rejoice
to say, ineffectual.