Hacking - a history
Hacking - when the game was
tough
'Short of
manslaughter'
Much has been said and argued about
stamping on players on the ground this year - as in Ireland's matches with Italy
and Wales and as in the match between the Hurricanes and the Cats. Compared to
the hacking of old, stamping is a pastime of innocents.
One side of the argument says that it is
against the Laws of the Game and bad for the game's image, the other that it is
a part of the game and getting rid of it is to turn the game
soft.
Much the same argument was used of hacking
in the late 19th century.
Peter Shortell, an eager referee's man in Cheltenham, has provided much of the information below on
hacking, which was a real issue.
In days when varying forms of football were
played at schools, old boys of those school tried to find a common way of
playing football - which was not soccer but a goal-orientated game played with a
ball and which included all sorts of activities, including handling. If you were
from Rugby School in the Midlands town of Rugby it included hacking.
In 1863 the Football Association was founded
to organise a way of playing football. In 1871 a Football Union was founded with
clubs and schools which broke away from the Association.
They had two major differences. They wanted
to handle the ball more than the Association was allowing and they wanted to
hack - at least some wanted to hack.
Hacking had originally been allowed by the
Association (as was handling) but later forbidden. The first Association rules
of 1863 state the following:
IX. A player shall be entitled to run
with the ball towards his adversaries' goal if he makes a fair catch, or catches
the ball on the first bound but in the case of a fair catch, if he makes his
mark he shall not run.
X. If any
player shall run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal, any player on the
opposite side shall be at liberty to charge, hold, trip or hack him, or to wrest
the ball from him, but no player shall be held and hacked at the same
time.
Because many of the eager men in the
breakaway to form the Union were old boys of Rugby School, they adopted the
Rugby way of playing the game and so called it the Rugby Football Union, as the
ruling body in England is till called.
There were two forms of hacking and hacking
over.
Hacking and hacking over both required the
use of the booted foot. Hacking was simply kicking forward. Hacking over was a
clever form of tripping. Hacking over was less brutal for being less direct, but
it was only a matter of degree of brutality.
Jenny Macrory was the archivist at
Rugby School and the author of Running with the Ball. She writes:
"Hacking originated in the huge scrums of
the Big Side games when no one had much idea where the ball was until he felt it
with his feet. Forwards stood upright and simply hacked their way forwards with
(or more often without) the ball. Sometimes one player would act as post, his
duty being to get the ball between his feet and stand bolt upright allowing the
forwards to propel him through the melee."
This form of hacking was seen as a good
thing - getting movement in these mass scrums of anything up to 150 players,
making the ball available. The arguments for this form of hacking were akin to
the arguments in favour of stamping - getting an opposing player out of the way
to free up the ball.
It was not all innocent fun, though. In his
History of Rugby School,
WHD Rowse wrote:
"These scrummages provided an excellent
opportunity for boys to pay off old scores, or to join forces in a deliberate
attack on an unpopular rival. While this practice had the effect of curbing the
worst excesses of any bullying or overweeningly despotic senior boys, such
attacks could be barbarous, and it was hacking employed for this purpose which
Temple quite rightly banned. The heroes of a
Rugby novel by AG Butler, declare unambiguously before a
match that 'for them the one interest in the game, the one object in the field,
was to lame Potter', a praeposter who had misused his authority.
"Certain big Fifth Form fellows of the class
commonly called 'good hacks', who, though they did little else in the game, were
good in giving and receiving hacks, vowed to give it him. 'Fight neither with
small or great, fight only with the King of Israel', was their plan of action,
and as Potter had lots of pluck, and was also famous among other things as a
good hack, bloody shins on both sides were certain to follow. Those were the
times, happily long past, when a rule had to be made that you might not hack and
hold a fellow at the same time. No penalty attended the violation of this rule,
but public opinion fairly well enforced it."
Hacking had its rules which varied from time
to time.
Hacking had to take place man to man - man
facing man. The player to be hacked was not to be held. The hacking was to take
place on the shin - between knee and ankle. While holding was forbidden the
hacked player could, of course, be pinned in the scrummage and the boot that
battered his shin could be a nasty one.
At Rugby School metal caps and hobnail boots were not allowed but
there were games elsewhere which allowed metal caps to boots which were called
navvies.
It was painful. Here is an excerpt from
Jenny Macrory's book: "After one Cock House match the forwards of the losing
side were said to have been so badly injured that their housemaster 'sat down on
the grass and wept like a child'. In retelling the tale WHD Rowse remarks that
perhaps not too much should be made of this, 'for the gentleman in question
evidently had the gift of tears, and used to weep over a Greek play in form'.
Perhaps it was these boys that GC Vecqueray, later an Oxford Blue, tried to take
into the School House, to which he belonged, to have their injuries treated. The
old School House butler showed his disapproval of such weakness by forbidding
them entry with the stern words: 'Let them bury their own dead'."
Dr Frederick Temple was the headmaster of
Rugby School and later the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was once
asked by a visitor who had been watching a game if he ever stopped a match.
Temple replied: "Never, short of manslaughter." But even he
later asked that deliberate hacking be stopped.
Temple, by the way, was unpopular with Old Rugbeians
because he interfered in the running of games. Games were for players, not
headmasters.
FR Campbell, a member of Blackheath club and
a proponent of hacking, a leader in the breakaway from the Association, referred
to it as "the true football game". (Blackheath players came to be referred to as
"the hacking men".)
There were even occasions when the players
would ask for a break to hack. Often to a cry of Alleluia, players would line up
opposite each other and hack away at each other's shins. Sometimes players would
break off from a scrum and indulge in a bit of private hacking on the side. It
was, of course, bad form to back off or blub. That was not the sort of stuff
that muscular Christians were made of, men fit to govern an
empire.
Ironically, the Union, born to hack and to handle, immediately banned
hacking in 1871. Other than at Blackheath it never had a great number of
proponents. The RFU's laws, largely written by an Old Rugbeian, LJ Maton,
although Rugby School laws still allowed hacking, were intended for
national use and said:
57. No
hacking or hacking over or tripping up shall be allowed under any
circumstances.
The first Test was played in 1871 between
Scotland and England and there was no hacking.
Hacking over lasted till 1874 when it was
banned but as late as 1937 hacking and hacking over appeared in the laws as
illegalities along with tripping.
Hacking over was regarded as an artful
technique, once learnt it was never forgotten, they said, rather like riding a
bicycle.
Jenny Macrory again: "Hacking over was
the means of stopping a player who was running with the ball by tripping him as
an alternative to collaring him. A skilful player could apply a gentle, glancing
kick to the oncoming opponent which, if it caught him in the right place, (on
the shin about three inches above the ankle), and at the right time, just as he
was changing his balance to avoid the challenger), would bring him down on his
face "like a shot rabbit". Scientifically performed this manoeuvre was both
useful and efficient. It could also be used against the opposition player
nearest to the ball, who could be charged or hacked over, but not tackled.
Needless to say not all players were expert, and hacking over when mis-timed or
mis-used was brutal.
"Possibly it was an art best learned young,
and certainly best practised upon boys who fell less heavily. AN Hornby, Captain
of the Lancashire County Cricket XI and a well known three-quarter back at
football was prevented from scoring a try when playing in a match against the
school by being neatly hacked over behind the goal line on the gravel path by
the headmaster's garden wall. He unfortunately fell hard and was knocked
unconscious, and thereafter spoke very strongly against hacking over and the
methods of play employed at Rugby School."
The original written rules/laws of the game
at Rugby School state:
"The following Rules were sanctioned by a
Levee of the Sixth, on the 28th of August 1845, as the Laws of Football played at
Rugby School."
These included:
xxvi. No hacking with the heel, or above
the knee, is fair.
xxvii. No player but the first on his side, may be
hacked, except in a scrummage.
xxviii. No player may wear projecting nails or iron
plates on the heels or soles of his shoes or boots.
This was essentially repeated in a similar
publication from Rugby School in 1862:
22. No player may be hacked and held at
the same time.
23· Hacking with the heel is
unfair.
24· Hacking above,
or on the knee is unfair.
25. No one wearing projecting nails, iron plates, or
gutta percha, on the soles or heels of his boots or shoes, shall be allowed to
play.
As the Laws of the Game developed, the first
aspects of foul play discussed concerned throttling and hacking. One report
stated: The champion hack of one side coming through the scrummage finished off
his triumphal march by place-kicking a half-back right off his
feet."
In 1857 the law forbade hacking with the heel above the
knee.
In Blackheath's 1862 laws we read:
Though it is lawful to hold a player in
the scrummage, this does not include attempts to throttle or strangle, which are
totally opposed to the principles of the game.
Any player
holding the ball, unless he has made a mark after a fair catch, may be
hacked.
No player may be
hacked and held at the same time, and hacking above or on the knee or from
behind is unfair.
No player
may be held or hacked unless he has the ball in his
hands.
If you believe that the game is softer now,
then you are right - in terms of hacking, and certain types of tackles, but no
in terms of number of tackles and the speed of the clashes. It's not a softer
game. The greater brutality of hacking does not justify the brutality of
stamping.
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