FOOTBALL TERMS

FOOTBALL TERMS

When I first played organized football in 1955, our coach had us play a game in practice late in the year that he called "Guadalcanal". It was the equivalent of what they now call "Kill the man with the ball". It was a kind of 'anything goes' type of game meant to toughen you up. There were two teams and non-stop action trying to get the ball across the goal. It was often played when our field was very sloppy from rain.

The word Guadalcanal refers to the Pacific Ocean island which was the sight of one of the fiercest battles of World War II. In 1942, Marines stormed the beaches of Guadalcanal in an effort to take it away from the Japanese and hold it as an intermediate air base and naval haven. It was the first offensive we took after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was the bloodiest of the land battles in the Pacific during the war and it took six months to get this little island and surrounding sea under control.