By Isle of Wight Observer
This week we have two stories about ball games from the Isle of Wight Observer published on 7th December 1889. The two articles show very different sides to the spirit in which the games were played.
The 1st Battalion of the Oxford Light Infantry was based at Albany Barracks in Parkhurst from 1887 until 1893, and the description of the “shindy”, arising from their game with Shanklin, is very stirring. We suspect the language used was not at all “elegant and refined”!
Rugby is said to have been invented in 1823 by William Webb Ellis, a student at Rugby School, and is referred to in this article as football under Rugby Rules. Poor Ernest clearly took to heart the spirit of the game but sadly took his fair-mindedness to his grave.
Really football seems to be a game which calls forth more ill-feeling than any other. The fracas at Cowes, last week, has been followed by a row at the match at Shanklin, last Saturday, between the second eleven of Shanklin, and the Oxford Light Infantry. Each side had made two goals up to about a quarter of an hour before the time for closing the match, when the Parkhurst team claimed a disputed goal. The Shanklin umpire, who saw the kick, declared it no goal, and the Parkhurst umpire admitted that he was not watching the game at the time. The referee interfered at this stage and declared it a goal, whereupon a great uproar ensued, the visitors in the end marching off with many expressions of indignation, and refused to finish the game. The spectators took sides, and there was a nice shindy for some time. The language is said to have been extremely elegant and refined, and some of the players are reported to have displayed much ingenuity in coining epithets for their opponents.
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Football, too, is responsible for another death in our county. A young student at Winchester (Hants) Diocesan Training College, named Ernest Cheeseman (22), was playing the game, under Rugby Rules, when he fell in the scrimmage, and two or three others fell on him. He was unable to rise, and could feel nothing. It was found that the spinal cord had been terribly injured. The young man, before he died, explained what occurred, blamed no one for the accident, and said the game was perfectly fair. There is something about the English character which makes the element of danger in the game doubly fascinating to the young fellows who play it. Foreigners look on at Englishmen playing at football with astonishment.