making slips, and the nervous anticipation whenever the ball is shooting within his vicinity.
It is rarely you meet with players magnanimous enough to throw at goal in the way you would prefer, or a little slower than you would suggest. They may put the greatest amount of brute force into their most violent throw, and you must not budge or move a hair of your eye lashes. Have you ever had an opponent, noted for hard throwing, pick his ground ten feet from you, and send the ball whizzing from the lower angle down the netting straight at your face? And has it not felt pleasant when it smashed through your crosse, raising a half of a duck-egg on your forehead, and giving you an imaginative demonstration of sidereal astronomy, commonly called “seeing stars”? But that’s no odds, if you save game for your side in a match. School boys should never cry when flogged, and goal-keepers should never flinch when hit.
The first virtue of a goal-keeper is to forget that he has nerves, and simply accustom himself to stopping balls, high or low, swift or slow, because they have no business to pass him.
