Sporting Aspects
Immortals at the Oval
By J. P. W. MALLALIEU S a cricket-ground the Oval means little to me. It has none of the graciousness of Lord's; little of the'majesty of Old Trafford. Like Headingley it is tatty. At Bramall Lane you may be covered with smuts; but at least they are smuts from the steelworks and are intended to obscure visibility for Lancashire batsmen. At the Oval the smuts which cover you are bits of half-burned paper, despatched by near- by householders whose only thought, on a bright Saturday afternoon, is to clean their flues. On the Worcester ground the first sight you see is the Cathedral. At the Oval it is the gasometer; and though, when full, this has a monstrous beauty, it is usually half-empty.
- But as a football-ground the Oval bathes in more romance, more glamour, more history than any. Here, in 1872, the Wanderers beat the Royal Engineers by one goal to nothing in the very first Cup Final. Most of the players in those teams wore beards. All wore long trousers and long-tasselled caps. All were amateurs; and all were expert dribblers. Did not the. great R. W. S. Vidal once score three goals in succession from the kick-off without friend or opponent touching the ball after it had reached him ?
The Oval saw the first challenge from the North to the dominance of the South when little Darwen, a team of weavers, played the Old Etonians in the Fourth Round and were only beaten in the second replay. Did it not see the triumph of the Nortb, when Blackburn Olympics in 1883 beat the Old Etonians (2-1) in the final ? It saw the coming of profes- sionalism; even that little Darwen team had been suspect. How came it that among the Lancashire weavers were two Scotsmen who did not know a loom from a mule ? It saw the eventual dominance of the North, with Royal Engineers, Old Carthusians, Old Etonians and Oxford University replaced in the final by such odd-sounding clubs as West Bromwich Albion, Aston Villa and Preston North End, to say nothing of Blackburn Rovers, for whom the Oval became a second home.
So when, last Saturday, I went for the first time in my life to see football at the Oval, I walked, if not with reverence at least with nostalgic interest, into a ground where so much foot- ball history had been backed and carved and polished. I was to see the Third Round tie, of the Football Association Amateur Cup between Pegasus and the Corinthian Casuals. Because these two teams include the best players produced by Oxford and Cambridge, and possiblAtie best players produced by English public schools, I hoped to see the sort of football which Wreford Brown and Cobbold and Wollaston must have played all those years ago and to see it amid surroundings on which historic creepers fed.
I was almost wholly disappointed..= Players of old probably felt that they were at the Oval by right. They played in the centre of the ground, with their supporters packed on all four sides of the pitch, with hardly a reminder that this was primarily a home of cricket. True, when Cup Final crowds reached 20,000, the Surrey County Cricket Club looked at their turf and told the F.A. to go elsewhere; but for some twenty years football was an equal partner. But on Saturday there were pointed reminders that football was at the Oval only on sufferance. Behind the pavilion there were posters telling us that in late August, 1952, Surrey wohld be playing Warwickshire and Northants. Then, as if grudg- ingly admitting that last season was in fact over, there were the freshly-painted score boards with the rota invitingly at 00, as though- the first innings of the new season was about to begin. Finally, the soccer match was pushed right to the Vauxhall end and there segregated from the precious cricket square by nets and ropes, so that one side of the playing pitch was bare of spectators and the 12,000 football multitude com- pressed into Vauxhall was laid open to the scrutiny of the' disapproving pavilion and the bleakly vacant stands- beside it. It seemed that the surroundings subdued both the crowd and the players. There were, I think, no rattles, no dinner- bells. True, one or two supporters carried large cardboard effigies of Pegasus, but they brandished these with more deter- mination than spontaneity, as if daring the Pavilion to object. The only genuine football humour I saw came frond Pegasus supporter who wore, not the multi-coloured bowler hat which is so popular with ordinary football fans, but, since his team came from universities, a blue and white mortar-board. He made himself even–more scholastic with the aid of a false nose; and, whenever Pegasus did something good, instead of flinging his arms in the air or shouting, he rose gravely from his seat and bowed as though he were a professor of science , at the conclusion of a demonstration. But gaiety was absent from the rest of us. Under the Oval's reproving stare we did not dare to emulate Lord Kinnaird, holder of five cup- winners' medals, wbo, when. Old Etonians beat' Blackburn Rovers 1-0 in 1882, showed his joy by standing on his head, Pavilion or no Pavilion.
Perhaps after all there was not much for us to show joy about. For this eagerly-expected game was scrappy. Pegasus began well enough; and after some twelve minutes a shot _by their centre forward beat everything except the desperate foot of a Casuals' full-back and flashed for a - corner. Thereat Sutcliffe, from the left wing, sent one over which Pawson volleyed cleanly into the net with all the skill of the Reich Carter he so much resembles. This shook the Corinthian . Casuals out of their history and into life, and for the last twenty minutes of the first half they were on top. But they only once looked like scoring. That was when Boardman centred beautifully and Insole hit the ball with his head far harder than ever I could hit it with ray foot. The ball flashed towards the far corner of the net, but, with a hair's breadth separating it from the line, it was diverted by Brown's finger- tips to safety—or frustration.
Perhaps that 1-0 lead' at half-time was hardly deserved. But the 1-0 lead at the finish was fully deserved. It should have been 2-0, for, towards the end, Laybourne broke clean away, and Bunyan, diving at his feet with more courage than judgement, was lucky to find that the bouncing ball had hit his body instead of going into the net. The second half was in fact almost entirely, Pegasus, -but it was none the less uninspired. Pegasus may well play far better in the next round and yet lose.
So this afternoon, from which I had expected so much— too much perhaps—moved round as palely as the February sun. Yet there was in it one glow of romance, because the game was refereed by Rudolf Rassendyll. Do you remember Charles Dana Gibson's pictures of Rudolf in The Prisoner of Zenda, how tall he looked, how full of shining rectitude, how cool, how firm, how decisive he was ? Here he was at the Oval, a head taller than any of the players, never ruffled, never hesitant, never, it seemed, under the necessity of running. As he strode through the game, chin slightly lifted, eyes alert but kindly, evil-doing melted with shame. I see that for this afternoon he was calling himself Mr. W: Ling, but that mould not have deceived Rupert of Hentzau; and when, at the end of the game, while players and spectators turned away to Vauxhall, Rudolf strode away on his own to the Pavilion, and was lost in the mist, I knew that he was going. to have tea with Wreford Brown, with the Old Etonians, with the little men of Darwen—and with Queen Flavia----and that the Pavilion would accept all these, at any rate, as its own.
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