SPORTING ASPECTS
By J. P. W. MALLALIEU SOMETIME in the early 'thirties I was sent to interview the London manager of a French bank. We discussed my business with cordiality but, as I reached for my hat, I mentioned Monsieur Flandin, who, that week, was the Prime Minister of France. Cordiality vanished. Monsieur Flandin, on a recent visit to London, had worn plus fours. Monsieur Flandin was not " sdrieux."
There were, and are, good reasons for condemning Monsieur Flandin, but his plus fours were not, and are not, among them. I never try to compel anyone to be interested in sport. That is one of the reasons why I feel distaste for Hitler, Stalin and the majority of masters in English public schools. But equally, at that level, I feel distaste for those who write off the poetry of' Francis Thompson because Francis Thompson felt passionately about cricket, who cannot believe that a politician who fusses about the football results can be sincere_ in his hatred of injustice, who assume that Monsieur Flandin, merely because of his plus fours, cannot be " serieux."
You see, the first sounds that I can remember were the song of a lark, the clank of looms and the thud of ball on bat.
For the first house I remember is still called Larkwood, is still on the fringes of the weaving village of Delph and is still in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where, you may have heard, folk play cricket. Those sounds were not heard in separate com- partments of one day or week or year. They intermingled. Those sounds of ecstasy, of work and of play became my life, and, though I no longer live in Delph, they will cease echoing only when I am in my grave. ' In my present job, at the House of Commons, there is work— work, perhaps, whose sounds are those of the scratching pen and the bickering voice, but which yet funnel upwards from the clanking loom. In my present job, for me at any rate there is a sense of play, for, when I first went to the House, as a boy of eight behind my father's coat-tail during the First World War, there was no cricket or football into which I could absorb Myself, and it was therefore natural that Asquith and Lloyd George should fill a void which was later to be refilled by Holmes and Sutcliffe. To this day I have never quite overcome my childhood feeling that professional politicians were no more important than professional cricketers or professional footballers. Yes, in my present work, there is a sense of play. But there is no ecstasy. When I lay on my back on my Yorkshire moors, sensed the dry sweetness of the hot, red moorland grass, heard the sounds which drifted from the valley below and watched the fluttering levitation of the lark, I felt at one with the world. There was no contrast, no contention. There was unity, absolute. How can one expect to find that in the House of Commons, where, by our nature, we must dispute about relative rights and wrongs ? So, in my present job, with all its work deep-rooted in human livelihood and with the aura of play with which my own experiences surround it, I yet move instinctively, without pretence, elsewhere for my _ecstasy. I move to sport. To some sports. To most sports.
Last year a lady wrote to tell me that her cook once cooked for Reggie Spooner and had said that "Mr. Reggie" liked kedgeree. From that day to this she had eaten little else but kedgeree and had liked it. I, too, have taken to kedgeree. Through kedgeree I seem to see again those flowing drives which, thirty-two years ago, drew me from Old Trafford to the heights. I have sat in what is now called the Leicester Square Hall and watched Smith or Inman or Joe Davis screw the cue-ball back as though he held it by elastic, as though the ball was drawn into position by a string; and, seeing that, I have seen again the larks drawn upwards by cords unseen.
At Cardiff Arms Park I have sat aside while a great Welsh Rugby crowd thundered its sense of community into Land of My Fathers; and I have felt alone. But once, just once, I have been a part of that Welsh crowd. It was when the Barbarians were playing the Australian Wallabies in their last match in Britain. Because the Barbarians were not a Welsh team the Welsh crowd refused to commit itself. It refused to take part. It refused to sing. It sat on its hands, as if to say, "Make me clap if you can." It was made to clap, for those two teams played inspired football, and when, with seconds to go and the Barbarians leading by a fraction, a final scrum was fought out in front of the Barbarian posts, when the Barbarians somehow hooked the ball, when they kicked it home to touch and victory, we of that crowd rose beyond ourselves, beyond our races, our prejudices, our partisanship, our hopes and our fears, back into the clouds of glory where there is no prison-house.
And—oh dear, I hoped not to mention it—I have walked the stars with Huddersfield Town. There was that moment two years ago when we got the two points we needed to save us from relegation. We had battled all afternoon against Manchester City's great goal-keeper, Swift, who was playing the last game of a long career. He had stopped shots with his left hand; he had stopped them with his right. He had stopped them with those beetling eyebrows of his and, as the last minutes ticked by, our faces were taut and grey. Then, suddenly, we were home. It would be improper for me to say that Swift let us have that goal, but I think that, on the whole, he was not displeased when his finger-tips only grazed the ball as it flew past; and my ecstasy was coloured by the sight of a black head shaking itself from side to side in the Manchester City goal-mouth and of a smile which stretched from Leeds Road to Moss Side. Swift and I, I felt, had the same feel.
Of course we wanted our own team to win. But in our deepest heart we wanted something more even than that. We wanted to hear and see and feel and be a part of the unconfined joy of our fellow-men. I thought of Swift again only the other day when Huddersfield Town were playing Leicester at Leicester. Leicester were Huddersfield's great rivals for promotion. Huddersfield had not yet been beaten away from home, and a record post-war Leicester crowd turned up to see that record broken. At half-time Leicester were leading by one goal to nil. Then, early in the second half, Huddersfield equalised, and thereafter the game swung this way and that as the minutes ticked by. Almost at the end Leicester scored the winning goal, and the shout that went up from 40,000 people probably still rumbles in - the stratosphere. By all calculations, I should have been dismayed by that goal and deaf to that shout. But I was not. I was caught into the delight of the home-crowd. My misery was submerged in its joy. I was at one again. I had reached the absolute.
So don't look down your noses at people who love sport. Don't altogether condemn, as I sometimes do, a community in which only through sport so many people can reach their fulfilment, can feel at one with each other, can bathe their finger-tips in Paradise. I can think of so many great ones of this earth to whom sport is inconsiderable. But I prefer to think of that Prime Minister of Great Britain who, of a morn- ing, opened first the letters from his gamekeeper; and I prefer to think of the late George Tomlinson. At San Francisco, when the United Nations was being founded, an American pointed to a Chinese who was read* a newspaper. "Look," said the American, "there is the birth of a new world. There is a newspaper, printed in the United States, writ-ten in Chinese, containing every important piece of news that has happened in the world yesterday." " H'm," said George. He put his arm mund the Chinese's shoulder and peered at the newspaper. " H'm," he said. "How's Bolton Wanderers got on?" -My beloved George !
I'm sorry. This has been a sermon. Next week—to your surprise and, I hope, your delight—I shall be writing almost exclusively about Huddersfield Town.
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