When m’lady starts writing about sports events, anything can happen and when m’lady ia a British lass writing about an American football game, that “anything” usually does happen.
Such was the case last Saturday when an Army eleven defeated a Navy SeaBee squad 20-0 on London’s White City gridiron. The London Daily Express editor, no doubt with tongue in cheek, assigned Vivien Batchelor, a girl reporter to cover the game. It was her first game, but the story she wrote qualifies her to apply for a job as Bob Hope’s script writer.
“The object seems to be to pass the ball to some unfortunate player and then for everyone else to fall on him”, the Express football expert informed her 3,000,000 readers. “The only thing that moves the play toward the goal posts seems to be the instinct of self-preservation of the man with the ball. He runs as far as he can before he is killed or maimed by the other players”.
Vivien was baffled by what she described as the “little man with a bucket, who kept running onto the field.” But some kind gentleman in the press box finally volunteered an explanation. “I learned that he was the “waterboy” she wrote, “who was not, as I thought, interested in injured victims, but merely was trying to keep alive those who still were able to move”.
The uncomfortable afternoon began for Vivien when she arrived at the stadium and was handed one of the handsome printed programs. “You shudder” she informed her public, “at the sinister program. It lists 11 men on each team and 15 substitutes, who didn’t have long to wait for their call to battle”.
Vivien’s bewilderment was furthered by the sight of a stretcher bearer and doctor with his proverbial black bag on the sidelines. “The only time you see a doctor scampering with a black bag in England” she reported “is when he is off on a maternity case”.
The huddle fascinated Vivien. “It’s wonderful” she said. “The players bend over and put their heads together. Then the captain selects his victim for the subsequent violent assault.”
Summing up her refreshing afternoon—not in London’s healthy sunshine but in White City’s swanky restaurant-bar- Vivien concluded, “Sixty-thousand Yankees and their girls had a wonderful time. I had a wonderful time. But what I still cannot realize is that the players had a wonderful time too.”
And have we ever told you about the cricket match we covered while in England?
