Football at New Haven

Reports from Yale have been none too optimistic. The material, say correspondents, while satisfactory, is not up to the mark of the days when Tad Jones was playing, or even of the 1916 squad. Thus Yale goes back to the old cry of wolf. Here we have one sign at least of a return of that old Eli system which accomplished so much to the wailing of duly accredited Jeremiahs. Considering that Tad Jones is at the helm at New Haven, and that Johnny Field, Ted Lilley and other veteran foxes are assisting him, we will do well not to take too much store by the probable tenor of dispatches which will bear a New Haven date line throughout the season.

As a matter of fact, the glowing things that New Haven scribes said about Yale's material last year were justified. The material was good and the Eli eleven of 1919 was just a shade short of being everything that the ardent well-wishers of the Blue could have hoped for. In the Princeton game only a break toward the end of the game, when Yale was taking chances to break a tie, enabled Princeton to win, while the Tigers earlier were obliged to resort to a long field-goal chance to top the score. In the Harvard game Yale had three chances to score touchdowns and thus hand the Crimson a good beating. First was after that long advance to the Harvard goal line, where any headwork would have crowned this advance with a touchdown; second, when Reinhardt missed a forward pass while standing in such a position as to have enabled him to score had he caught the ball, and third, when three Yale men tried to fall upon a misdirected Harvard pass instead of picking up the ball. It will thus be seen what little things arose to separate Yale from a glorious conclusion of her 1919 season; they arose as much because the Elis were not poised, not mentally poised, as anything. Divisions in the coaching staff, divisions among the players, served to keep the Blue from the rewards of destiny. Where there is solidarity of impulse and concentrated will, adverse breaks are not so liable to occur.