Lives in Cricket No 46 - George Raikes

27 Raikes’ Meteoric Rise as a Top Quality Footballer well in front of the posts he may be sure that the opponents will try to charge him over and thus hustle the ball through the goal … A goal-keeper has no time to think twice in Association football; indeed, readiness of resource and agility of action are indispensable to success.” Despite the moans of Fry regarding the lack of need for the ‘penalty’, the football pitch was the site of much filthy play in the Victorian era, where it was common practice for ‘dirty’ players to lead with the knee when challenging for a 50-50 high ball. Early writers dealt at length with unnecessary ‘roughness’ and it is a sobering thought that, in the 1888-89 season, at least eight deaths were attributable to foul play. It was quite permissible for a ‘keeper who caught the ball to be shoulder-charged into the back of the net by a posse of hostile forwards and to have a score (or a ‘point’) lodged against him. To avoid this fate, it was desirable that custodians were both able to clear the ball by punching and kicking it away rather than by catching it (and risk being “caught in possession” (note 1) and also to be physically robust enough to shrug off those shoulder-charges that they were not agile enough to evade (note 2) . Charles Samuel Craven stated that “A good goalkeeper should be not less than 5ft 6in in height (the same in girth if he likes)” and it was almost certainly necessary that a Victorian goal-keeper needed to be agile, brave and above all, physically imposing to a degree almost unrecognisable to those who only know the ‘modern’ game (note 3) . Amateurs and Professionals; Queen’s Park and the Corinthians Organised soccer as recognisable by modern fans began its history as a wholly amateur game in nature and the rise of professionalism is of direct relevance to the story of George Raikes. The Football Association was formed in 1863, with Laws of the Game published in the same year and the FA Cup, then a competition for amateur clubs, was founded in 1871. In the next eight years the Scottish, Welsh and Irish all established their own FAs and, in 1884, the British Home Championship was inaugurated. At this point professionalism was still technically illegal, but it had become an unstoppable force and the amateur FA was no longer an immovable object. The payment of players was legitimised in 1885, in the face of a determined rearguard action by the inevitable ‘dinosaurs’, and was followed by the formation of a plethora of leagues throughout England and Scotland. Having lost the war, the amateur dinosaurs insisted on continuing to fight the battles; Fry’s defence of the amateur game was lukewarm and probably counterproductive: he admitted that professionalisation raised the standard of the game and the proliferation of competitions increased the interest of the average spectators. It had been noticed by the English FA that the annual fixtures between the English and the Scottish elevens were being dominated by the northerners, who had won six of the last seven games. In the days before the ability of many Scots, in many sports, to raise their game when turning out against England was a recognised