THERE WILL INEVITABLY be conflicting reports as to when team games began at Phillips Academy, though the records are clear with regard to the first interscholastic contests in football or baseball. But some version of these games was being played at the school long before the Civil War. As early as 1805, there was some football activity going on, for Henry Pearson, the son of the first Principal, who had entered Andover in 1804 at the age of nine, wrote to his father, then at Harvard as Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages, "I cannot write a long letter as I am very tired after having played at football all this afternoon."(1) The game he was playing was soccer or a local adaptation of the round-ball game, since rugby football did not become popular until after 1823.

Football, from its start in England in the 11th century until the middle of the 19th 9th century, was strictly a kicking game, at first merely across a goal line. Picking up and running with the ball were prohibited. The modern game of rugby football originated accidentally. In 1823 William Ellis, a student at Rugby College, England, was involved in an inter-class football (soccer) game, played then according to the only rule known-strictly kicking. "Ellis, chagrined over his failure to kick the bouncing ball, picked it up and carried it down the field."(2) The game created unconsciously by Ellis became known as rugby to differentiate it from the original sport. When in the 1840's rugby became increasingly popular in England, the advocates of the original game met and ruled to adhere strictly to kicking; at the same meeting in 1850 they formed the London Association, whose major purpose was to preserve the rules of the old game. In time, in the United States, this game became known as soccer or association football(3)

In historical retrospect, then, it is really not so strange that the old game of football was being played at Andover in the early 19th century. Soccer had become increasingly popular in England and throughout Europe after James IV of Scotland had lifted the ban on it in the early 17th century.(4) Phillips Academy was one of the earliest legatees of the British public school system as far as games were concerned.(5) A corroboration of that assumption may be found in the annals of Phillips Exeter Academy, established just three years after Phillips Academy. Alpheus S. Packard, an Exeter alumnus who entered the school in 1811, says that the game of football was the popular fall sport, and that it had long been played at Exeter at that time. "The early games were pretty loose affairs, no account being taken of the numbers on a side. Those who sat on the north of the main aisle of the Latin room opposed those who sat on the south, and every agile and rugged boy was expected to take part. The game was purely a kicking contest; no carrying of the ball was allowed."(6) Obviously, despite the stern demands of the academic curriculum and the daily schedule, the enthusiasm for football among the students at both Andover and Exeter grew rapidly, and the game was being played at both schools shortly after they came into existence.

The game played then, however, was different from the regulated and standardized soccer of today. In the early days of English "futeball," "Players of adjacent Towns would meet at some midway spot. The bladder would be thrown down, as a signal for action, and then, with scores, and sometimes hundreds of players on each side, action would get underway. Apparently the rules provided that the team was winner which kicked the ball into the middle of the rival town. Play was accompanied by lusty yelling, and it is written that when victorious players came charging into small towns, kicking the football through the main streets, the non-contestant villagers became terrified. Shopkeepers closed their stores and shoppers remained indoors until the tumult and the shouting had died. "(7)

The football played by Henry Pearson and succeeding generations of Andoverians until the 1870's was probably the informal game of "drive" or kicking the old, round, rubber ball across a goal line.(8) By the 1860's, though, the game had gradually and almost imperceptibly changed; it had become less informal and more physical, reminiscent of the war-like mob-scenes of the early English game.(9) David Burrell, of the Class of 1863 and a player himself, captured the flavor of the contest:

The old days at Andover were great football days. (When or by whom the game was started I cannot say; but we had it. There seems to be an intimation of the game in the first clause of Deuteronomy 32.15 ["But Jeshurum waxed fat and kicked."] which was written about 1500 B.C. and possibly a later reference in the first clause of Isaiah 22. 18 ["He will surely violently turn and toss them like a ball into a larger country."]). There were few or no rules, and no pent up "Bowl" or "Stadium" confined our powers. The field was raised from a hill in the middle of the field and then the world plunged in.

Davol was the best kicker, with Gorphias Stevens a good and very reckless second. I was listed as a "pea-flutter"; my function was to be in and under and around wherever weasel work was needed. But oh, the lust of those embattled days! Many a time I staggered to my room on the top floor of "C.C." so winded that like Paul, whether in the body or out of the body I could not tell.

I am seventy-five now, but I smell the battle afar off.(10)

The pea-nutter's job called for speed and agility. Using such devices as holding or shouldering the opponent and sometimes even kicking him in the shins, he skirted the edges of the fray following the ball and attempting to get it to the best kickers on his team. The only rule strictly adhered to was that which prohibited holding the ball or running with it. Except for that restriction the game being played at Andover at the outbreak of the Civil War already resembled rugby football.

In the following extract from a reminiscence by Cornelius Kitchel, P. A. 1858, which was published in the Mirror for June 1893, there is a much more detailed description of how the game was played, as well as a philosophical discussion of the comparative merits of football then (1858) and the modern game:

In recalling some of the features of school life while Dr. Taylor was in the prime of his manhood, and the old stone building still was standing with Number Nine in it, the centre of its power, let me group my reminiscences, to avoid diffuseness, about three points, the football field, the debating society and the recitation room.

The football field was the centre of activity in autumnal evenings. Afternoon recitations lasted well along toward five o'clock after which and a hasty supper, from Latin and English Commons, . . . and the scattered boarding houses, little groups of the fellows eagerly wended their way across or round the Seminary grounds to the field back of the Seminary buildings. This field is somewhat level at first as it runs back, dotted here and there with boulders and ledges of protruding rock, with an old quarry or sand hole bounding it on the East, but after a while dropping quite rapidly, till at the far end it was terminated by the public road slanting across it.

It would be difficult to find a less promising place on which to play the game of football.

Once on the ground the two best players chose sides, by much experience wise to select the most skillful. Perhaps only twenty-five or thirty at first, but gradually augmenting and apportioned until seventy-five or a hundred or more on each side were facing each other. The side to which either gave the ball always went out to the far end of the middle field, faced again toward the Seminary, and deputed one of their number to "raise" the ball; that is, kick it from a well selected place on the ground, high and far over toward the ranks of the opponents, ranged say two or three hundred feet before them. Happy was the side which had on it, to perform this function, the one who in this far excelled us all of splendid physique and noble bearing .... We followed him with pride as we went back say fifty feet to run and then always, just as he came to the ball, he stopped short, losing all his momentum. Then we looked at each other and laughed and said, "John always does that." But having stopped, like a pair of huge compasses, he swung back that mighty leg, "with thews of Anakin" and with it smote the ball and it would rise, just at the right angle and shoot out with renewed impulse of a "home-run" hit, far over upon the opposite side.

Till e'en the banks of Tusculum,
Could scarce forbear to cheer;

and so the game began.

Football then was foot ball and not hand ball or arm ball, as chiefly now. It was not fair to catch or hold the ball and it was dead the moment it was held, as it also was if it went out of bounds on either side. Then it was to be "umpired" as the term was. The fellow who held the ball tossed it up straight as might be into the air, both sides crowded thick about him "on side" ready to smite it with fist, or beat it down or gain any advantage. Then mighty was the struggle. The heaviest and stoutest who now-a-days would be in the rush line, but fifty or sixty of them leaped and pushed and struggled and struck toward the ball. Back of them the lighter and fleeter men, who would play halfback now, waited eagerly if the ball by chance was dashed near them, while still further out, like a fullback, I see with the eye of memory the most elegant valedictorians and most skillful of rushers watching if the ball came too far out to cunningly guide and rush in around the side and at the last perilous moment when the enemy had all but met him, give it a well-directed powerful kick toward the opposing goal. Such a football, made to be kicked, was of course round, presenting a good honest diameter to the toe impelling, not oval and tricky to the kick as now.

So the tide of battle ebbed and flowed. Sometimes it seemed impossible to get the ball either way, so hotly was the ground contested. From side to side across the field the crowd of combatants swayed; over limits into the quarry went the ball here, only again and again to be back and umpired; but ahead toward either goal it would not go till, after an hour's contest within a string [boundary] little more than a hundred feet wide across the field, both parties were wearied nearly to exhaustion.

On another evening the ball would be instinct with life, as if of quicksilver. Kicked at first far over toward one goal, a happy and prompt return kick would send it back, when perchance some "peanut" (for playing off side was termed "peanuting"---why, I never knew) amid howls of execration, getting control of the ball and skillfully dodging and out-running a score of adversaries at last would drive it over the enemies' limit; for goals, we had none, only a stone wall across one end and the other.

But autumn evenings are short. The sun has long set, the grass is wet with dew, and the ball scarcely visible any more, a bit of animated blackness in the darkness. Home to our rooms we went under the yellow elms growing leafless fast, eagerly discussing the points of play, tingling with health and life, our brains clear and fresh to program the task of the morrow.

To a modern football player this may all seem unscientific and barbarous. Largely the game was undeveloped, but the opposing sides were by no means mere mobs. The centre, guards, the tackles, the end men and the backs were all there, only more of them, and unnamed as yet, but doing their work respectively, in no mean way. Two advantages must be admitted over the present game. The attack was then upon the ball and not upon the player so largely, and so the brutal element and the dangerous element were pretty much eliminated. And second, the whole school could play and have the benefit of it. Now, it is twenty-two men who play, and the multitude look on; then it was the multitude who played and the twenty-two or less who looked on. Everything is highly differentiated and organized now in most every line. Glee clubs have captured and confined the singing which formerly of an evening made the campus melodious. The singing may be better now, but how about the singers---the great multitudes who used to love to join in an humble way? Football is a greater game, perhaps, than it used to be, but how about the players ---those who ought to be playing but can't now? We are more scientific than we used to be, but are we happier?(11)

Some idea of how completely football had captured the imagination and the emotions of the school can be sensed in a poem which appeared in the Philo Mirror in 1858. Entitled "The Football Ground on the Eve of October 18, 1858," it compares the game with the battle of Waterloo:

There was a sound of joyfulness by night and Phillips' sons had gathered then
Their strength and agility and might
The moon shone o'er fair youth and brave men
A hundred hearts beat quickly,---and when
The ball arose from off the rising knoll,
Keen eyes looked fire to eyes that spoke again,
And all rushed forward with a maddened yell.

And there was running in hot haste the Senior lately under "Mead;"
The Middler and junior from their hours afar,
Went rushing onward with unwonted speed,
And valiantly fought in the cause of war,---
And the deep tones of the rebounding ball,
And its hollow sound upon some student's empty drum,
Roused up the lazy, like as to 'Uncle's" call
While, throu the lockers-or with terror drums,
Or whispering, with white lips, "When will the game be done?"(12)

So it was that football early became the king of games on Andover Hill; the crowning achievement of an athlete's career was to make the team, an honor comparable to a citation for gallantry on the field of battle. As a matter of record, the names of the first of those heroes appear in another long poetic effort of the Philo Mirror entitled "Football---1861."

From the other side, to stop them, rushes many a gallant man,
And Ainsworth and stout Evans fall, clinched with Duval and with Van.
But Lo, the gallant Stevens, a player stout and strong,
Through the thickest of the enemy still drives the ball along
And swiftly it flies through the air, and hits the topmost stone.
A long, loud shout for victory---Hurrah! The game is won!
Then all honor to old Phillips, her praises long we'll sing,
And, a rousing cheer for football, of all our games the king.(13)

A closer examination of the poem and of another one about football in the Mirror of October 1862, reveals some definite changes in the game. The teams are now organized into four distinct groups---the "Scrimmagers," "Bulldogs," "Rushers," and "Dodgers"---although the specific function of each group is left to the imagination. Apparently, also, the number of players on each side is fixed at twenty-five. In analyzing the second poem we discover the most revolutionary transition from soccer to rugby, reminiscent of the aforementioned incident which occurred at Rugby, England, thirty-nine years earlier. One of the players,

A stout and sturdy man,
Who has long been resting for the task, and thus it is he can;
Snatches up the ball, and rushes the whole length of the long field,
And though all attempt to stop him, he will not his treasure yield.
Till he's gained the final boundary, o'er obstructions in his way,
And is thus, by acclamation, called the hero of the day;
Now the men come off the playground, both to leave their favorite game
But oh, see! For some are tattered, others bruised, still others lame.
And, instead of decent students, from a field of active sport,
They resemble worn out veterans, from a field of different sort.(14)

Andover was playing in the 1860's, then, the game which was played at Harvard at that time, but which was banned by their faculty. In 1871 President Eliot gave the students permission to play what was called the "Boston Game," whose rules allowed running with the ball. From this point on, rugby football gained the ascendancy over the soccer-type game, which went into a long decline until the turn of the 20th century. Phillips Academy was definitely in the forefront of the various changes which ultimately evolved into American football.

During the ten years between 1863 and 1873 football at Andover seemed to suffer a temporary eclipse. The Mirror scarcely mentions the game, whereas its pages after 1865 are full of the glories of baseball. Doubtless the Civil War had a chilling effect on the hearts and minds of those students who did not join the colors. Compared with the bloody struggle to determine the fate of the nation, football seemed somewhat frivolous and less important. For five years the battlefields of the South became the major focus of the only school publication. Furthermore, there were other reasons. Football had been played and popularized in this country largely by students of private schools and colleges. During the war, enrollments in these institutions dropped, and interest in the game waned. It was not until the early 1870's, well after the war, that it was rekindled. On the other hand, during the same period the game of baseball spread throughout the land and became the national pastime. The effect on Andover athletics was immediate; baseball became highly organized into various class or club teams, played not only in the spring of the year, but also in the early fall. Football, still largely spontaneous and informal, was pushed back to the late fall of the year when the weather was likely to be impossible for playing anything. In the fall of 1869 there were four club baseball teams playing an intramural schedule, as well as a school-picked team, which played the best club team. But interest in athletics was dampened early that year by a heavy snowstorm on the 28th of October.(15) It is not strange, then, that the first school team to play interscholastically was organized and captained by a Civil War Veteran in 1866, when the Andover baseball team played Tufts; the first school football team, on the other hand, was not organized until nine years later when it lost to Adams Academy at Quincy in the year 1875.

The years between 1870 and 1875 were crucial ones in the evolution of American football. The first intercollegiate football game, which had been played at New Brunswick, New Jersey, between Rutgers and Princeton on 6 November 1869, was really a soccer game. It was played under the London Association rules; there were twenty-five men to a side, and running with the ball was prohibited. In the early 1870's, Columbia and Yale joined Princeton and Rutgers, playing association football, or soccer with variations. In 1873 Yale invited Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Rutgers to a convention at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York to draft a code of rules and organize the Intercollegiate Football Association. Harvard, which had organized its own Football Club on 3 December 1872, refused the invitation because of the belief that the "Boston Game" was irreconcilable with the game the other four were playing.

Harvard's decision may have been the most momentous in the history of football in the United States---for if it had accepted the invitation and gone along with the other four colleges, the American game never would have evolved and soccer would have been established as the intercollegiate sport; the rules drafted in New York on 19 October 1873, were based on the "association" style of game.

The Harvard Football Club, organized originally for class competition, had to look elsewhere than to Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Rutgers for intercollegiate competition because of rules differences. It, therefore, welcomed a proposal by McGill University for a series of games, two to be played in the spring of 1874 at Cambridge and a third at Montreal in the fall. The first of the two at Cambridge was to be played under the rules of the "Boston Game" and the second under McGill's rules, which were the rules of the English game of rugby. The first game at Cambridge, played under Harvard rules, resulted in a win for the home team, 3 goals to 0. The second, under rugby rules, ended in a scoreless tie. It was agreed to play fifteen men on a side, but four members of the McGill team were unable to make the trip at the last minute and there were only eleven to a side, a coincidence which ultimately stamped American football as an eleven-man game.

The scores of those first two rugby football games have long been buried in the archives at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Montreal, Canada. The significant fact was that Harvard liked the rugby game so much that it adopted the rugby rules, including the oblate rather than the round ball. Yale and Princeton in turn later followed Harvard's action. The battle had been won that was to decide the pattern of a new game---a game stemming from rugby but gradually, step by step, departing from rugby to take on those characteristics which would eventually make the American game far different from its parent. (16)

Harvard's determination to play rugby football had an immediate impact on two local schools, Adams Academy in Quincy and Phillips Academy and the Theological Seminary at Andover. The schools were approximately the same short distance from Harvard, although on opposite sides of Cambridge. Both sent students to the university; and the Harvard influence had been predominant in the origins and early development of both. It is reasonable to assume that the interchange of ideas between the schools and the college was not only verbal but also visible. One year after Harvard had formed a Football Club, Andover formed its first Football Association. (17) While the Association was probably not rugby-oriented as yet, things were to change within one year. There entered Andover in the fall of 1874 a Thomas W. Nickerson of the Class of 1876, Harvard 1880. He had learned the game of rugby football in Boston and introduced it to Phillips Academy.(18) That fall, exactly six months after the Harvard-McGill contests, Andover had its first rugby team, but played no outside games. The following year an Andover rugby football team travelled to Quincy in October 1875, and lost to a good Adams Academy eleven by one goal to one touchdown. Captain and Coach Nickerson scored the only Andover touchdown. Andover football had gone interscholastic. Interestingly enough, both schools fielded teams of eleven players, whereas in the first Harvard-Yale game played on 13 November of that year, Yale conceded to Harvard's wish to play fifteen. It was not until the following year that Harvard accepted what was to become the standard number---eleven. (19) It can hardly be denied that both Andover and Adams were in the vanguard of the development of American football.

The early football relationship between Phillips Academy and Adams Academy provides a curious interlude in the annals of American education. The Quincy school opened in 1872, many years after John Adams, the second President of the United States, established the Adams Temple and School Fund, whereby he gave some 160 acres of land to the people of Quincy in trust. Its first purpose was to rebuild the meeting house, now Quincy's famous First Parish Church Stone Temple, dedicated in 1828. The second purpose, when sufficient funds had accrued, was to build on the site of the Hancock Parsonage the old type of classical school, in honor of Adams' friend John Hancock, who had been born there, and the Josiah Quincys, father and son, who had lived there, and, incidentally, had attended Phillips Academy.

The school was a prestigious one for many years. Emphasis was on the classics and preparation for Harvard. It was essentially a day school for Quincy boys, but there were some boarders starting in 1874. Unfortunately, the enrollment started at about 80, rose to a peak of 154 in 1877, dropped to 37 in 1896, and closed with 45 in 1908.(20) Horace E. Scudder, writing about Adams Academy in 1877, made the assertion that "in the amount and character of the work done the school probably approaches more nearly than any other the German Gymnasium."(21) In describing the athletic facilities at Adams later he suggests, "There are no boating facilities convenient enough to make boating one of the regular school sports, and football is the favorite game. "(22)

While the yearbooks of the academy make no mention of its athletic programs and no records of games were kept, local newspaper accounts in the 1880's indicate exceptionally strong baseball and football teams for a small school.(23) In the seven games of football played between the two schools between 1875 and 1882, Andover won only two. The student body at Andover in 1878 was concerned about the situation:

The greatest hope was placed in the Football Team this year and as results have shown, not entirely in vain. On the whole, we have good reason to feel an earnest pride in the eleven; they have fought hard and conquered as often as they have been beaten. The game at Quincy was the first of the season, and we were beaten; but to be beaten by such adversaries is not a disgrace. As someone has said, we go down to Quincy in the first part of autumn in order to learn how to play. Now, Quincy has sixty and odd members; we, one hundred and ninety odd. The fault, then, is not in the men, as far as their physical condition is concerned, but in the amount of practice they get.(24)

It was apparent that on very short acquaintance Andover had developed a healthy respect for the quality of Adams football.

Exeter first played Adams Academy in "modern" football in 1879, having adopted the new game as late as the year before. The game ended in a tie; that year both teams defeated Andover by substantial scores. It is interesting to speculate as to what might have developed had Adams Academy not been forced to drop football early, and later to close her doors for lack of enrollment. The oldest schoolboy rivalry in American football would have been that between Andover and Adams, going back to 1875! Here were three "classical" schools, Adams, Andover, and Exeter, all of whom enjoyed the same academic and athletic relationship with Harvard. Two grew and prospered; the other, unfortunately, failed. The Andover-Exeter rivalry, like the Harvard-Yale college rivalry competition, went on to become the greatest schoolboy athletic tradition in the country through the mid-20th century.

By 1876 football was well established at Phillips Academy, and in that autumn two games were played. The team lost to Harvard Freshmen and defeated Adams Academy by identical scores, one goal and one touchdown to nothing. The second game played at Quincy has some very interesting overtones. Escorted by a "Mr. Scranton," the Chairman of the Football Committee, the Andover eleven took the 9:25 train to Boston, repaired to the Parker House to eat an enormous dinner, then moved on to Quincy for a three o'clock game. Three half-hour periods were played before five hundred spectators, Andover getting a touchdown in the first and a goal in the third, while they held Adams scoreless.(25) "The Quincy boys did not get within seventy-five feet of their goal during the game. "(26) After the game the Adams eleven invited the Phillips men to a "handsomely prepared supper," in the course of which the Principal of the rival school entered and made a very polite speech. The news of the victory had earlier been telegraphed back to Andover, where bells were rung as the students prepared to welcome their heroes.

When the train came in, the "fish horns" were perfectly deafening. The players were instantly carried on the shoulders of their friends from the train to a wagon. Not one was allowed to touch his foot to the platform of the depot. There the procession started up Main Street, where, in front of the post office, three rousing cheers were given. When the line reached Love Lane (now Locke Street), it of course turned down and continued till it came to School Street, and then turned up through the Abbot Academy grounds; then to the Principal's house, where cheers were indulged in by the students in general, to which he replied with the laconic speech of "Oh, boys, you did nobly." The parade then proceeded to the Mansion House, where Bliven, the Andover captain, was called upon for a speech.

Scranton, the Manager of the Football Association, then invited the eleven and the substitutes into the Mansion House for a beautiful supper prepared for the starving athletes. Having devoured their third enormous meal within the space of twelve hours, the players continued to extol and edify one another with a few more speeches and then retired.(27)

The Mirror throws further light on the football proceedings that year:

The second game was with the Harvard Freshmen, in which our boys got beat, the Harvards getting one goal [the records show one goal and one touchdown]. We would remark here that new rules were introduced; besides, three good men were absent, whose places were filled by substitutes. The eleven have knit suits, pants of white; blouses of maroon, with cap and stockings of the same. They look very pretty on the field. The eleven have introduced a new cheer, as follows: P-H-I-L--L-l-P-S, Rah! Rah! Rah !(28)

The Harvard-Andover football tradition had begun and was to last until the mid-1950's. The major schoolboy opponent shifted from Adams Academy to Exeter for reasons already discussed. The color of the first football uniforms was "maroon"? That soon changed!

And so it was that in the year 1876 there were born most of the traditions which have marked Andover athletic celebrations for almost a century, until very recent times. Those fortunate Andoverians who have been there will never forget the victory ride on the freight wagon, the big black "stogies" provided by the manager, the triumphant procession through the Abbot Campus, where the girls, bedecked and resplendent in their evening gowns, paid tribute to the conquering gladiators.

The Football Committee in the fall of 1877 sent a challenge to Exeter, but no game could be arranged that year, for the Exonians were still playing association football. In the fall of that year, however, there appeared on the New Hampshire campus for the first time the oval rugby football, a curiosity which, coupled with the challenge from Andover, led them to develop a team the following year. Nothing daunted, the Committee arranged four other contests for the Andover eleven in 1877. School pride in the football prowess of Phillips Academy, as well as some advice to the Football Association, is found in the fall issue of the Mirror.

A word about Football. We believe it is based on a sure foundation, and the association is in a healthy condition; the past record is good, but we can do better in the future. We would advise the Committee, who will have it under their control during the fall, that the men be put in training at once; let all the interest be centered in this sport, and postpone baseball until spring. Our wish is that Phillips may see the day when she will compel Harvard to lick the dust, bearing home the victorious eagles. It would give us great pleasure to see the Athletic Association reorganized. The remark has come to us, if there is a school in this country that resembles Rugby, it is Phillips Academy.(29)

Pride went before the fall, however, as Andover defeated Tufts Freshmen, tied Harvard, and was beaten by the Resolutes of Boston and by Adams Academy. Apparently the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.

One of the most important years in the history of athletics at Phillips Academy was 1878. Although the school baseball nine had been playing outside teams for eight years, the first Andover-Exeter baseball game was not played until 22 May of that year. Likewise, football history at Andover really begins on 2 November 1878, with the first football game with Exeter. Even more significantly, 19 October of that fall saw the first edition of the Phi1lipian, the school newspaper, which immediately and for the next one hundred years assumed the role of the conscience of Phillips Academy and the most effective reportorial agent for the advancement of sports programs and physical education at the school.

On 2 November 1878, Exeter, accepting a challenge from Andover, journeyed about eighty strong to the Hill for the first football game between the two academies. The invaders were easily defeated, largely because of inexperience. They had played no other outside match that season. The score against them was one goal and five touchdowns to nothing. The game was played in two periods of forty-five minutes called quarters; in the first, Andover made four touchdowns, in the second, one touchdown and one goal. The game started at 2:05, "Mr. Belknap, P. A., and Mr. Parrish, P.E.A., acting as umpires, and Mr. Riley, P.A., as referee."(30) The rather bizarre conditions under which the game was played are indicated by the fact that at one point during the tussle proceedings were interrupted by a "cane rush" between two Andover classes (1880 and 1881). The primitive nature of football at that time is suggested by the team organization. Each eleven was divided into six "Rushers," three "Half-Tends," and two "Tends," or "Backs." One of the Andover stars was P. T. Nickerson, the brother of Thomas Nickerson, P.A. 1876, who made two of the five touchdowns. Reading between the lines, one can assume that this team was gifted with runners but not many kickers. The Exeter team was treated to lunch by the Andover team and, after the game, to a dinner at "Hatch's,"(31) whereupon they were politely escorted to the station. The victors then returned up the hill to celebrate by making the rounds of all the teachers and extracting a speech or a cheer from every one.(32)

Exeter could hold its head high; its team had played a spirited game and thoroughly enjoyed the hospitality of their hosts. The Exonians returned home from the fray full of enthusiasm and promptly sought a return match, but Andover declined the invitation.(33) Once again that first year of competition set a precedent, yet to be broken, of only one football game annually between the two rivals, although in other sports over the years "home and home" arrangements have been made if both parties agreed to two games. In a thinly veiled hint to the Faculty and Administration, the Phillipian's final comment on the contest was suggestive:

We were glad that so many of the Exeter boys could witness the game on the 2nd inst. Would that the powers that be might be moved to give us Andoverians a like privilege.(34)

The pattern which would endure for a century, and longer, had been established.