“Kay got the offer of a headmastership at a small school in the north, and jumped at it. I pity the fellows there. They are going to have a lively time.”
“I’m jolly glad Dencroft has got the house,” said Kennedy. “We might have had some awful rotter put in. Dencroft will help us buck up the house games.”
The new house-master sent for Kennedy on the first evening of term. He wished to find out how the Head of the house and the ex-Head stood with regard to one another. He knew the circumstances, and comprehended vaguely that there had been trouble.
“I hope we shall have a good term,” he said.
“I hope so, sir,” said Kennedy.
“You—er—you think the house is keener, Kennedy, than when you first came in?”
“Yes, sir. They are getting quite keen now. We might win the sports.”
“I hope we shall. I wish we could win the football cup, too, but I am afraid Mr Blackburn’s are very heavy metal.”
“It’s hardly likely we shall have very much chance with them; but we might get into the final!”
“It would be an excellent thing for the house if we could. I hope Fenn is helping you get the team into shape?” he added.
“Oh, yes, sir,” said Kennedy. “We share the captaincy. We both sign the lists.”
“A very good idea,” said Mr Dencroft, relieved. “Good night, Kennedy.”
“Good night, sir,” said Kennedy.
XXIII
THE HOUSE-MATCHES
The chances of Kay’s in the inter-house Football Competition were not thought very much of by their rivals. Of late years each of the other houses had prayed to draw Kay’s for the first round, it being a certainty that this would mean that they got at least into the second round, and so a step nearer the cup. Nobody, however weak compared to Blackburn’s, which was at the moment the crack football house, ever doubted the result of a match with Kay’s. It was looked on as a sort of gentle trial trip.
But the efforts of the two captains during the last weeks of the winter term had put a different complexion on matters. Football is not like cricket. It is a game at which anybody of average size and a certain amount of pluck can make himself at least moderately proficient. Kennedy, after consultations with Fenn, had picked out what he considered the best fifteen, and the two set themselves to knock it into shape. In weight there was not much to grumble at. There were several heavy men in the scrum. If only these could be brought to use their weight to the last ounce when shoving, all would be well as far as the forwards were concerned. The outsides were not so satisfactory. With the exception, of course, of Fenn, they lacked speed. They were well-meaning, but they could not run any faster by virtue of that. Kay’s would have to trust to its scrum to pull it through. Peel, the sprinter whom Kennedy had discovered in his search for athletes, had to be put in the pack on account of his weight, which deprived the three-quarter line of what would have been a good man in that position. It was a drawback, too, that Fenn was accustomed to play on the wing. To be of real service, a wing three-quarter must be fed by his centres, and, unfortunately, there was no centre in Kay’s—or Dencroft’s, as it should now be called—who was capable of making openings enough to give Fenn a chance. So he had to play in the centre, where he did not know the game so well.
Kennedy realised at an early date that the one chance of the house was to get together before the house- matches and play as a coherent team, not as a collection of units. Combination will often make up for lack of speed in a three-quarter line. So twice a week Dencroft’s turned out against scratch teams of varying strength.
It delighted Kennedy to watch their improvement. The first side they played ran through them to the tune of three goals and four tries to a try, and it took all the efforts of the Head of the house to keep a spirit of pessimism from spreading in the ranks. Another frost of this sort, and the sprouting keenness of the house would be nipped in the bud. He conducted himself with much tact. Another captain might have made the fatal error of trying to stir his team up with pungent abuse. He realised what a mistake this would be. It did not need a great deal of discouragement to send the house back to its old slack ways. Another such defeat, following immediately in the footsteps of the first, and they would begin to ask themselves what was the good of mortifying the flesh simply to get a licking from a scratch team by twenty-four points. Kay’s, they would feel, always had got beaten, and they always would, to the end of time. A house that has once got thoroughly slack does not change its views of life in a moment.
Kennedy acted craftily.
“You played jolly well,” he told his despondent team, as they trooped off the field. “We haven’t got together yet, that’s all. And it was a hot side we were playing today. They would have licked Blackburn’s.”
A good deal more in the same strain gave the house team the comfortable feeling that they had done uncommonly well to get beaten by only twenty-four points. Kennedy fostered the delusion, and in the meantime arranged with Mr Dencroft to collect fifteen innocents and lead them forth to be slaughtered by the house on the following Friday. Mr Dencroft entered into the thing with a relish. When he showed Kennedy the list of his team on the Friday morning, that diplomatist chuckled. He foresaw a good time in the near future. “You must play up like the dickens,” he told the house during the dinner-hour. “Dencroft is bringing a hot lot this afternoon. But I think we shall lick them.”
They did. When the whistle blew for No-side, the house had just finished scoring its fourteenth try. Six goals and eight tries to nil was the exact total. Dencroft’s returned to headquarters, asking itself in a dazed way if these things could be. They saw that cup on their mantelpiece already. Keenness redoubled. Football became the fashion in Dencroft’s. The play of the team improved weekly. And its spirit improved too. The next scratch team they played beat them by a goal and a try to a goal. Dencroft’s was not depressed. It put the result down to a fluke. Then they beat another side by a try to nothing; and by that time they had got going as an organised team, and their heart was in the thing.
They had improved out of all knowledge when the house-matches began. Blair’s was the lucky house that drew against them in the first round.
“Good business,” said the men of Blair. “Wonder who we’ll play in the second round.”
