ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL.

ENGLAND BEATEN BY WALES. WELL-DESERVED VICTORY.

Wales won her Association Football International at Blackburn yesterday by two goals to one, and, having previously beaten Scotland, should finish the season as the champion country. England’s team was unsatisfactory; wrong forward, weak at half, and none too sound at full-back. It was a hard, but not a brilliant, game, which some 20,000 people saw. The English players in the first half were clever, but their football had little punch in it, and after the interval, though they were first to score, they carried themselves as beaten men. Wales deserved her victory. It was the reward of stern fighting under conditions which imposed a heavy handicap on everybody. The ground in places was white with snow; here and there were patches of mud; and yet, though the ball was heavy and slippery, there was quite a deal of sharp, crisp, bright combination. The deciding difference was that whereas England’s players were for ever trying to be neat and nice and precise, the Welshmen were all for making headway, which, in the circumstances, was decidedly the proper thing to do. What the English selectors thought about it all I do not pretend to know. The team which went down yesterday at Ewood Park will never do against Scotland. Maybe Sewell will be held to blame for the first goal got by Wales. He certainly appeared to misjudge the flight of the ball, but it was not Sewell who let England down. I consider him to be good enough for any class of football, but I will not have it that Smart and Mort, the latter of whom came into the side for Wadsworth, are the best of all English backs under pressure. They were never really happy or sure; they were nothing like their club selves. If I had to decide I should plump for Cresswell and Wadsworth; they certainly appeal to me more than do the Aston Villa pair.