Football days : $b memories of the game and of the men behind the ballEdwards, William H. (William Hanford)
General
Football days : $b memories of the game and of the men behind the ball
Edwards, William H. (William Hanford)
Football
Gloom hung heavy over the Princeton stand. Defeat seemed inevitable. Of
eleven players who started in the game on the Princeton side, eight had
been incapacitated by injuries of one kind or another. Doc Hillebrand,
the ever-reliable, All-American tackle, had been compelled to leave the
game with a broken collar-bone just before McBride made his touchdown.
I remember well the play in which he was injured and I have
resurrected a photograph that was snapped of the game at the moment that
he was lying on the ground, knocked out.
[Illustration: HILLEBRAND'S LAST CHARGE]
Bummie Booth, who had stood the strain of the contest wonderfully well,
and had played a grand game against Hale, gave way to Horace Bannard,
brother of Bill Bannard, the famous Princeton halfback of '98.
It was no wonder that Princeton was downcast when McBride scored the
touchdown and the goal was about to be kicked.
Just then I saw a man in football togs come out from the side lines
wearing a blue visor cap. He was to kick for the goal. It was an unusual
spectacle on a football field. I rushed up to the referee, Ed
Wrightington of Harvard, and called his attention to the man with the
cap. I asked if that man was in the game.
"Why," he replied with a broad smile, "you ought to know him. He is the
man you have been playing against all along, Gordon Brown. He only ran
into the side lines to get a cap to shade his eyes."
I am frank to say that it was one on me, but the chagrin wore off when
Brown missed the goal, which would have tied the final score, and robbed
Princeton of the ultimate victory.
The tide of battle turned toward Yale. Al Sharpe kicked a goal from the
field, from the forty-five yard line. It was a wonderful achievement.
It is true that circumstances later substituted Arthur Poe for him as
the hero of the game, but those who witnessed Sharpe's performance will
never forget it. The laurels that he won by it were snatched from him by
Poe only in the last half-minute of play. The score was changed by
Sharpe's goal from 6 to 5 in our favor to 10 to 6. Yale leading.
The half was over. The score was 10 to 6 against Princeton. Every
Princeton player felt that there was still a real opportunity to win
out. We were all optimistic. This optimism was increased by the appeals
made to the men in the dressing room by the coaches. It was not long
before the team was back on the field more determined than ever to carry
the Yale ball back to Princeton.
The last half of this game is everlastingly impressed upon my memory.
Every man that played for Princeton, although eight of them were
substitutes, played like a veteran. I shall ever treasure the memory of
the loyal support that those men gave me as captain, and their response
to my appeal to stand together and play not only for Princeton but for
the injured men on the side-lines whose places they had taken.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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