‘Simple!’ said the C.P.S., who had once seen a match in Sydney. ‘It’s as easy as tea-drinking. There’s no expense, except the first one of the ball. It’s not like cricket, you know, where you’re always putting your hands in your pockets for something or other.’ ‘I’ll give ten shillings, Mr Brown,’ said the Doctor softly. ‘Same here,’ said the Chemist. ‘How do you play it?’ asked the Saddler, and the Blacksmith, and the Constable, who had just dropped in for a warm and a yarn that chilly evening. ‘Well,’ explained the C.P.S., who had ideas, ‘first you get your ball. Then you put up a couple of sticks with a cross one on the top of ’em. Then you measure a distance, say one hundred yards by, say, fifty, on a level bit of ground, and put up another set of sticks. Then you get your men, and pick sides, and pop the ball down in the middle, and wade in. For instance,’ he continued, ‘s’pose we’re playing Saddlestrap. Well, then, d’ye see, we’ve got one goal—that’s what they call the sticks—and they’ve got the other. We’ve to try and block ’em from kicking the ball over our cross-bar, and do our best, meantime, to send it over theirs. It’s just a splendid game for this weather, and nothing could well be simpler.’ More men came in, the idea caught; a club was formed, and that very night the C.P.S. wrote to the capital for a ball ‘of the best make and the latest fashion.’ But it was a very long way to the capital. So, in the interval, the C.P.S., who was an enterprising young Native, procured and erected goal-posts and cross-bars of barked pine; and very business-like they looked with a little pink flag fluttering from the summit of each. At last the new ball arrived. But, to the secret astonishment of the C.P.S., in place of being round it was oval. However, he was not going to expose his ignorance and imperil the reputation already earned as an exponent of the game, so he only said,— ‘I sent for the very best they had, and I can see we’ve got our money’s worth. I’ll take her home and blow her up ready for to-morrow.’ For a long time the ball seemed to go in any direction but the right one, kick they never so hardly; whilst, as a rule, the strongest and most terrific kickers produced the least effect. They tried the aggravating thing in every position they could think of, and, for a considerable period, without much success. It was a sight worth seeing to watch the Blacksmith, after scooping a little hollow in the ground and placing the ball perpendicularly therein, retire and prepare for action. Opening his shoulders and spitting on his hands, he would come heavily charging down, and putting the whole force of fifteen stone into his right foot, deliver a tremendous kick; then stand amazed to see the ball, after twirling meekly up for a few yards, drop on his head instead of soaring between the posts as it should have done.