The Volunteer for Liberty, V2, No. 31, September 5, 1938.

[This article was written while the Brigade was in rest.]

It was a great game. The Mac-Paps put up a swell battle and lost gamely. (It isn’t too much out of the way to say they took it sort of hard, so why not say it?)

One Sunday morning –on July 10^th to be accurate –the Officers and Commissars of the British Battalion played and beat the Officers and Commissars of the Mackenzie-Papineau at soccer.

That isn’t the way to begin the story but wat’s the difference? It still was a great game and British comrades had to earn all their points. There was a point in the game when the British had the Mac-Paps gained steam and shoved in one for themselves. But the British played like lions and they gained another.

From then onward the game was fast and furious. The Mac-Paps demonstrated that fury to their advantage and succeeded in tying the score. If there was ferocity and fury exhibited before, there isn’t the word to describe the rapidity of the movement that followed.

Major Smith and Commissar Rogers of the Mac-Paps were encouraging their men on to victory. Frank was doing a swell job in interference and stealing the ball away any number of times and the Major was giving heavy propaganda to the enemy with the idea of demoralizing them. But the British had the same objectives as the Mac-Paps so Major Smith’s political work was wasted. After all Capt. Fletcher and Commissar Bob Cooney were able to hold up their own and their team (Sam Wilde was vacationing with a fever in the hospital) and they crashed the powerful defense of the Mac-Paps –Lt. Henry Mack –to make their 5^th and winning point.

In the last three minutes of the game the Mac-Paps twice made two close heart-breaking misses. They were so damned near the mark that you felt the old soccer should have curved of its own volition and scored for the Mac-Paps. But balls don’t do such things, do they? And as the trite old proverb says—a miss is as good as a game lost, or something to that effect.

The most surprised man in the game was Commissar Larry Cohen who scored what I had thought a brilliant point, which gave the Macs their fourth point. Larry’s honesty disillusioned me completely. I thought he showed unequalled quickness of thought and remarkable agility when he caught that runaway ball with his knees and gently pushed it for a goal in an imitation knee-bending exercise. He said the ball came along, he happened to be there, it hit his knee, bounced off and went for a goal and was surprised to learn a moment later that he scored for his team. Larry’s modest enough but there isn’t any point in denying you made a point when you actually did.

I don’t think it would be fair not to mention just once more that the British Battalion won fairly and squarely. It’s the second game in a row in which they beat the Mac-Paps and they promise to keep beating them strongly stating that the first several victories of the Mac-Paps were simply accidents. I don’t think it’s rash to guess that if the Mac-Paps had a few more Spanish comrades to their team that they can tame the Lions in the next match.

Tags: Blast from the Past