Of late much has been heard of the Northern Union game of football and its supposed advantages over the Rugby Union game. In some quarters, particularly in those which hotly support the New Zealand professional team, a great deal of stress is laid on the greater fastness of the Northern system.

In an article headed "The Northern Union Game: Is it Football?" in "Amateur Sport Illustrated," E.H.D. Sewell effectively dispels this illusion.

Mr Sewell has well earned a wide reputation in many branches of amateur athletics, and particularly so in boxing, football, and cricket; therefore "knows what he is talking about." He says : -

"When I was at Bedford a very old friend of mine was always trying to pull my leg on the subject of Rugby football, which, he said, was not football at all, but handball, and an exceedingly dangerous, not to say vicious, form of handball at that, as compared with Association football.

It is only by adopting this criterion, which led him to regard the Rugby game as inferior to the Association, because it was hand, and not football, that I am able to, answer the question asked at the head of this paper in the affirmative.

The Northern Union game is football in that sense only. For the rest, it is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor even a passable bloater.

The whole game, as a game, is spoilt by the one rule which makes it imperative that in order to find touch the ball must be made to pitch in the field of play and bounce into touch; otherwise a scrum must be formed at the spot whence it was kicked.

One can almost overlook the "play the ball" rule, and that which insists upon half-backs remaining behind the last row of the scrum, but one cannot pass by the most idiotic ordination ever passed by man for the utter ruination of a capital sport.

It is a popular belief that the Northern Union game is a much faster game - ergo, more attractive to the man who pays - than the true and only Rugby game. Like many popular beliefs, this is wrong.

It was a popular belief that C. B. Fry and Haywood cannot bat on wet wickets. It may be still, if so, it is on a par with the belief that the N.U. game is much faster than the R.U. game.

It is possible that two sets of good players - One cannot call XIII's teams - might make it very fast if they had unusual amount of luck in not finding touch and yet beating opposing backs, while kicking; but an ordinary game is probably, on the whole, slower than an ordinary R.U. game.

Let us consider this bounce into touch rule for a space. The man is not yet born who, for a kick of any length, can so "manipulate" the ball "with his foot" as to make it bounce into touch. That much is certain. In all long touch kicks there is an element, of luck - a puff of wind, a lucky or unlucky bounce on pitching, may make ten yards or more difference.

But the fluke has never reigned so supreme as it does in the Northern Union football where practically the whole art of establishing position by touch-finding is negated - or depends upon fumbling of the opposition back division.

As an example of a sequence of incidents in a N.U. game, the following will suffice.

The full-back catches a punt meant for a bounce into touch, runs as far up the field as possible, kicks almost straight up the field and follows up; a three-quarter dropping back. Opposing right wing three-quarter anticipates the punt, catches and returns it to mid-field, where opposing centre "marks" out of range of goal.

He may land the ball directly into touch, and tries to do so, but kicks badly and a wing three-quarter, with forwards charging down on him, catches and punts up field again, and follows up just too late to opponent full-back - and so on, da capo.

Meanwhile the forwards have watched the battle of the hoofs, and have run about ten yards all told. Indeed, once or twice during a match I saw, there was ample time for the two scrums to have a cup of afternoon tea what time their respective backs were "bouncing" each other, or trying to. But for the most part the two sets of forwards were busily engaged "unintentionally obstructing!" the follows-up with elbow and foot!

At the end of one of these punting displays it generally happens that the ball drops in the middle of a scattered crowd of forwards. Then the fun begins! The scene resembles a bun-scramble at a school treat very closely, and nothing but the whistle of the teacher - I mean, referee - puts an end to the melee.

Of football there is none whatever at this stage. There is just a writhing mass of humanity, some of it on the ball, some of it in juxtaposition, some rather more remote, and the rest as far off as you please.

I have a very vivid recollection of a New Zealander lying on his stomach with one Northern Unionist sideways across his back, and another kneeling near his head; which was being pressed, nose downwards of course, into Mother Earth. The whereabouts of the ball had long since lost all interest for the sportsmen, who outnumbered the foe by two to one. That, they knew, would come back when the backs had finished bouncing. Why worry?

Then there is the "play the ball" rule, which provides that a player Iying on the ground in possession of the ball must be allowed to get up and play it.

One sees humorous incidents during any game, but anything more comic than a ring of perspiring players stooping with their fingers stretched wide apart, like fish-hawks about to strike, round a prone performer hugging the ball and looking out of every corner of his eyes and the back of his ears as it were, for some loophole through which he may dart the instant he has decided to "play the ball" I never did see.

The player of the ball (as I have indicated) is supposed to be allowed to get up and play it; but the margin between his sinful frame and the turf was never very appreciable before the fish-hawks aforesaid got to their fell work, and the ball didn't get all the playing, I can promise you!

The "half behind the back row of the scrum" rule is not a bad rule, and, considering the free start which an opposing half thus gets when the ball comes to him, scoring ought, to the last day of the Northern Union, be very high. In the true Rugby Union game it would be if there were a similar law.

When in Northern Union land Brown scores a try and Jones kicks a goal, the score reads one goal one try, five points, instead of the far more simple one goal, five points. This difference seems to have been framed rather from a desire to be different than for any other reason.

By parity of reasoning there is just about that much justification for the other differences between the two sets of rules which have only reduced a grand game, if properly played, to a miserable spectacle.

One feels heartily sorry for those who are doomed to waste athletic ability upon a pastime the rules governing which so handicap them."