|| ao San Oe

Here’s the Hungarian team in action in an exhibition game.

Old tennis ball secret

of Puskas’ football skill |

In the annuals of football history the part played by a grimy old tennis ball may
well rank as one of the most significant factors in the development of the best known
international of this era — Ferenc Puskas, captain of Hungary.

It was in 1943. He had been picked out of the-dust with eight other football-
mad urchins, knocked into shape by the old Bispest clubs as part of a junior team, and
aged sixteen, had been given his first chancein a First Division match.

But training both with the first
eleven and with his friends in

the junionrs was not enough, he
writes in his autobiography,
Captain of Hungary.

“I carried a tennis ball in my
Pocket and spent every free mo-
ment playing with it. If I was
Sent on an errand I dribbled the
ball all the way. :

“IT spent all my time trying
to gain complete mastery of that
tennis ball. I spent hours bounc-
Ing the ball on my left foot. At
first I succeeded in keeping it
going thirty or thirty-five times,
but gradually I reached a point
where I could manage 200 times
In succession without the ball
touching the ground.

“The result of this exercise
Was that I could stop dead on
my foot any ball that came my
Way, no matter from what di-
rection, or whether headed or
kicked.

“Naturally this has been very

useful to me ever since, and I
can truthfully say that my feet
can ‘feel’ the ball better than
my hands.

“T amused myself, too, by
dribbling the ball around ob-
stacles. I put up a series of stakes
and dribbled between them us-
ing first the left foot only and
then the right. As a result, I
can now dribble a football from
one end of the field to the other
without once looking at it —
provided of course there is no
opponent to interfere!”

So next time you watch the
superb ball-mastery of Ocsi (say
it: “Urchi’)—“Little Brother”—
Puskas, remember that old ten-
nis ball.

Puskas tells the story of his
football life—his first interna-
tional was against Austria when
eighteen—within the framework
of Hungary’s efforts to build up

England remembers this game

_ Still talked about in, England is the history-making game,

which

saw Hungary beat the English 6-3, marking the first

PA oe ever suffered by the English at home in an inter-
tonal match. Photo shows England centre-half H. Johnston

(wh:

ite shirt, right) challenged by a Hungarian attacker, while

- Merrick, the England, goalkeeper (left foreground) waits

take the ball,

the magnificent national combin-
ation which has not lost a match
in five years except that fantas-
tic World Cup final. And he tells
of all the hard work and thought
by trainers and coaches which
went into building the team.

More than one attempt has been
made to buy Puskas’ allegiance
to his country. In Italy in 1947
he was offered $90,000 cash. A
year later, in Sweden, he was
offered $150,000 by another coun-
try. He admits it was a terrible
temptation, but in the end he
realised that money could not
buy the friendship and esteem
of his own people.

The book is packed with good
anecdotes and sound advice for
the budding footballer—like his

“golden rule”: “The good foot-
baller keeps playing even with-
out the ball. All the time he is
placing himself so that when the
ball comes to him he is able to
make good use of it.”

Naturally the matches against
England are dealt with in detail.
Puskas’ happiest moment in Lon-
don, he says, was when a small
boy approached him in the foyer
of the Cumberland and _ said:
“Please, sir, take me to your
country and teach me to play
football.”

He was impressed by the spirit
and discipline of the English foot-
ballers. “They were true sports-
men,” he says, “keen to win but
ready to lose.”

They lost because their play
was based on a defensive plan
which almost gave up the idea
of attack. There was not suffi-
cient unity in the team. “Eng-
land’s idea of choosing the eleven
best players from a number of
different clubs and expecting
them to play as a team is out
of date,” he says.

England’s best player? Mat-
thews — “an example to all
footballers, the most wonderful
outside-right I have ever seen.”
And after Matthews he ranks
Billy Wright. “It was Wright
who scared me!”

Gert Whyte s

SPORTLIGHT

At CHRISTMAS play and
make good cheer,

For Christmas comes but once

a year.

So. wrote Thomas Turner
(1524-1580) and them’s my sen-
timents, also. Season’s greetings
to all readers of this column,
and may 1956 continue to see
sports lead the way in creating
greater friendship and good-
will between nations.

Sos a 5

Christmas is the time of year
when friends (and you ARE my
friends, as FDR used to say)
often present me with cigars,

knowing my fondness for the-

weed in this form. Pipes and
cigarettes are all right, I guess,
but as Lord Byron said about
tobacco:

Divine in hookas, glorious in
a pipe — ‘
When tipp’d with amber,
mellow, rich, and ripe;
Like other charmers, wooing

the caress
More dazzlingly when daring
in full dress;
Yet thy true loveygs more
admire by far
Thy naked beauties—give
me a cigar!

Cigar smokers like Frankie
Politano, Don Cox and Her-
man Rush will agree with Lord
Byron, I’m sure. They would
also concur with the philosophy
of George Arnold: *

‘O, finer far

Than fame, or riches, are

The graceful smoke-wreaths
of this free cigar!

You know, there must be
something to cigar smoking,
or so many poets wouldn’t have
written about the joys of puff-
ing stogies.

“What this country needs is
a good five-cent cigar,’ some-
body once said to somebody.

“What this country needs is

a good five-cent nickel,” some-
body else said a few years
later. All good retorts come too
late.

Back in the Hungry Thirties,
when I was a relief camp stiff
earning 20 cents a day in R.
B. Bennett’s slave compounds,
I used to collect my $5.20 at the
end of the month and draw up
a budget. It always included
half. a dozen nickel cigars —
my sole luxury.

Many a time, holding down a
freight on a long haul, in a
cold boxcar, I’d take out a
stogie and light up, and feel
100 percent better right away.

In fatter years, just before
the war, I’d puff away on a
dime cigar’at the fights in
Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto.
The best way to watch a box-
ing bout.

Overseas there were those
Dutch cigars, which went well
with cognac or Calvados, not to
mention. champagne. Christ-
mas Day, 1944, found my outfit
in an abandoned village on
the west bank of the Rhine,
billeted in houses, and with
nothing to do but fire our
mortars .at Jerry on the op-
posite bank. That was a fine
Christmas, in its way—we had
roast pork and goose, and after
dinner rum and cigars.

Ah yes, cigars are the smoke
for me. I sometimes toy with
cigarettes, but don’t inhale the
dainty things. Cigarettes are a
habit from away back. As
Thomas R. Ybarra wrote:

Oh, the*Roman was a rogue,

He erat was, you bettum;

He ran his automebilus

And smoked his cigarettum.
He wore a diamond studibus

And elegant cravattum,
A maxima cum laude shirt,

And such a stylish hattum.

$63 at x
How come cigars take up a

whole sports column? Now
that’s a good question. Let’s
see. Hmmmnn. Oh, yes —

Chris Chataway smokes cigars!

‘Top swimmers in action

Three of Canada’s best women swimmers are shown'in this
shot, taken early in the year at the Pan-American Games in

Mexico City.

Girls are (left to right) Helen Stewart of*Van-

couver, Lenore Fisher of Ocean Falls and Beth Whittall of Mon-
treal. Helen Stewart, who celebrates her 17th birthday December
28 (and will henceforth swim as a senior) has been B.C.’s out-

standing athlete this year.

Making her final bid for honors as a

junior last Saturday night at Crystal Pool here, she shaved one-
tenth of a second off her own Canadian mark for the 50-yard

freestyle event.

Her time was 26.8.

Miss Stewart holds the

U.S. 50-yard freestyle record with Betty Mullen of the Walter
Reed Swimming Club of Washington.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — DECEMBER 23, 1955 — PAGE 11