LIves in Cricket No 31 - Walter Robins

21 games, scoring 41 goals in all. The change in the off-side law had reduced the number of defenders required between the attacker receiving the ball and the goal line from three to two, with the result that professional clubs revised the positioning of their defenders to introduce the new concept of the ‘stopper’ centre-half. The Universities still regarded their centre-halves as having an attacking role and when Arsenal sent a team to Cambridge with five regular first-team players, it would be a clash of ‘old-style’ versus ‘new-style’. The professionals’ system would eventually be adopted by all football teams, but on this occasion the amateurs were unlucky to lose when, with the score at 2-2, Arsenal scored the winner in the 87th minute. Encouraged by their performance, Cambridge travelled to Stamford Bridge three games later to face Chelsea. The professionals fielded a strong side but were completely out-played and ended up by being barracked by their own supporters. Cambridge opened the scoring from a cross from Robbie and then went 2-0 up soon after. Chelsea pulled one back but went 3-1 down after Robbie scored from long range. A goalkeeping error brought Chelsea back into the game at 3-2 until a series of passing movements ripped open the Chelsea defence, including the ‘stopper’ centre-half, and Cambridge added two more goals to win 5-2. Cambridge were strong favourites when they returned to Stamford Bridge to face Oxford but it all went sadly wrong for them and they lost by the only goal of the match. * * * * * * * There would again be plenty of College football to play during the Lent Term of 1927, after Christmas, but for Robbie there was also the added honour of being invited to play matches for the Corinthians. The Corinthian Football Club was founded in 1882 and there was no fixed rule defining a member’s qualifications, but there was an unwritten law confining election to public-school old boys or members of a university. The club had grown in strength and influence, spreading the game around the world with regular tours to South Africa, North America, Brazil and many European countries. And the match at Hampden Park in Glasgow against Queen’s Park, arranged on or near New Year’s Day every year was played for an unofficial amateur ‘championship’ of Great Britain. Robbie was asked to make his debut in a home match at the Crystal Palace against Surrey County in which he scored one of the goals in a 3-3 draw, and he was also selected for the Corinthians’ last match of the season against the Navy. Football and cricket were only part of the very busy life at University now being enjoyed by Robbie. He had been featured in the Michaelmas Term edition of The Dial , the Queens’ College magazine, in an article under the title ‘Man of Mark’ and it gives a very clear indication of how he had entered wholeheartedly into the sport and social activities of his College. The obvious popularity of Robbie, as he is referred to throughout, had encouraged the author to present the profile very much tongue-in-cheek, knowing that his subject and readers would appreciate the humour. The article had begun by recognising his sporting achievements: ‘In 1925 this modest hero, quite unobtrusively, came into residence, and we of Queens Cambridge and Aubrey Faulkner