Page:Lacrosse- The National Game of Canada (New Edition).djvu/271

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248
GOAL-KEEPING.

good throwers aim in succession at the following points of your body, or on a level with them.

1. Head, or about it. 2. Breast.
3. Stomach. 4. Knee.
5. Ankle.

A word, to players, about taunting or carping a goal-keeper, when he happens to let the ball in. Consider the number of balls missed out in the field, where there is no great responsibility to make one nervous about stopping them. Consider the entirety of this responsibility upon the keeper, and the common reluctance to assume it. Put yourself in his place for one match, and trust me your depreciation will vanish. We doubt if any one can take a defeat more to heart than the goal-keeper who lets the ball through. No bitterer pill can he swallow. Sooner would he be maimed and smashed if he could thereby save game. Whose crest falls most when the men come off a lost field? Who, metaphorically, wears most willow?

We knew a goal-keeper, whose crosse never stood hard balls. Finally, in desperation, he wove himself one; doubly twisted the strings and in-