dered would be abuses of the kind indicated by those who cannot see any good in developing the game by such means.
Whatever, however, may be urged to their disadvantage, the fact remains beyond dispute that where Cup competitions have been introduced football has not only increased in popularity, but new clubs have sprung up and, as a natural consequence, players have multiplied. The extraordinary development of the Association game during the last fifteen years is beyond all doubt attributable in a very great measure to the influence of the Cup. It is something more than a coincidence, too, that the Rugby game is nowhere more popular than in the Midlands, one of the few districts where Rugby rules are predominant in which a Cup competition has been carried on with any energy.
Whether after a time Cups do not outlive the good they originally did, is a point outside the scope of the general argument that they have a material effect in encouraging the game, and stimulating the players when encouragement and stimulant are needed. If you seek the measure of the good the Football Association Cup has done to disseminate as well as to consolidate the game, you have only to look around. Nor, as far as one can see, is there the smallest evidence to show that either those who play or the public which support football are suffering from a surfeit in this particular direction. On the contrary, where such competitions have been conducted on proper lines there has been no diminution of interest, and indeed the older trophies, though insignificant by comparison with those of recent date, both in value and appearance, still hold their own with the best of those of later growth. The development of the game in Hampshire, and still more recently in Kent, would not have been so rapid, or have attained such proportions so quickly, had it not been for the spirit of rivalry engendered by the
