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.