Team Strategy in Soccer

[anthony.brown]

Old Corinthian and Half-back Play
By Rev. Andrew Amos
(Cambridge University, Corinthians, and England)
I was interested to find Charles O'Grady dotting the i's and crossing the t's of my statement on the strategy of half-back play.
It is only fair, however, to say that from a conversation I had the other day I found A.M.Walters in favour of the outside man theory. The reason he gave was that it enabled his brother and himself to pivot easily. Therefore both in my view and his the pivot of a line, whether half-back or back, loomed very large. I reminded him that this very question formed in the past a bone of contention between his brother and myself on an occasion when I utterly refused to take the outside man; his reply was somewhat gratifying to my personal vanity, but hardly to the point on a matter of theory, "P.M. & I agreed we should allow you to play your own game, because we knew that you could always be relied on to get to the right place." Even such a concession confirms my statements in two points. It is a question of what I have called pivoting; it is a question of getting to the right place.

The 'Inside Theory'
I grant readily that the 'inside man' theory fails unless the half-back drops back to maintain the full-back pivot and to act in support of the back as he advances to tackle. His right place then is clearly behind the back, but if the half-back is up to this I maintain that the inside theory is right, and the one we worked on.
Even with inferior forwards in front of you it was deadly. At Cambridge my college, with weak forwards, twice won the Inter-collegiate Cup in three years on the theory of 'keep the other side out and trust to luck to get a goal'. On another occasion (I think in 1886) Bishop Auckland Institute (a team minor to the better-known Bishop Auckland XI) met the full Sunderland XI in the semi-final of the Durham Cup at Darlington, and in the second half of the game, though the ball did not cross the half-way line a dozen times, and the Sunderland goalkeeper was walking about among the backs, Sunderland only got one goal; and they were not toying with us either.
Of course, the 'inside man' theory by placing the main pivot of the defence on the half-back line throws on that line great responsibilities. What it really amounts to is this: if your half-back line is reliable, the inside theory is far the best; if, however, you cannot rely on your halves you must fall back on the outside theory. But I maintain it is a falling back. Compare just here Mr O'Grady's criticism in regard to the half-backs which confirms my view.

Worked Out on Paper
The main point, however, is that what is known as the Corinthian game was built up originally on the theory that you could rely on your halves, for Cobbold and I at Cambridge worked the whole strategy out on paper, before it got into the Cambridge team. Consequently the efficiency of the Corinthian game depends upon the reliability of the half-back line, though in effect the half-backs seldom engage in brilliant and showy play because they are mostly spending themselves in taking particularly good care to make things easy for other people.
It is worth notice that the Corinthians have been at their best when their half-back line has been reliable. I don't say brilliant. I may seem, as a former half-back, to be attaching undue importance to that position, but I am at least advocating a theory which takes the half-back clean out of the limelight and gives him a position the finer points of which are only perceptible to the keen vision of the best judges of the game. Men whether at half-back or elsewhere, will perhaps always tend to play to the gallery. It is a pretty common failing, generally fatal.
Daily News (London) Wednesday 19th December 1923