Then Ballard had rallied, stopping that triumphal march, on its own
thirty-five yard line, but unable to check Quarterback Deacon Radford, who
booted a forty-three-yard goal from a drop-kick, with the score 3-0 in
Bannister's favor, and Deacon, a brilliant but erratic kicker, apparently
in fine trim, the Gold Green rooters went wild.
In the second half, however, came the break of the game, as sporting
writers term it. The strong Ballard eleven found itself, and with a series
of body-smashing, bone-crushing rushes, battering at the Bannister lines
like the Germans before Verdun, they steadily fought their way, trench by
trench, line by line, down the field. Without a fumble, or the loss of a
single yard, the terrific, catapulting charges forced back old Bannister,
until the enemy's fullback, who ran like the famous Johnny Maulbetsch,
of Michigan, shot headlong over the goal line! The attempt for goal from
touchdown failed, leaving the score, at the end of the third quarter,
Ballard--6; Bannister--3.
And Deacon Radford, whose first effort at drop-kicking had been so
brilliant, failed utterly. Three times, taking a desperate chance, the
Bannister quarter booted the pigskin, but the oval flew wide of the goal
posts, even from the thirty-yard line. With his mighty toe not to be
depended on, with the Gold and Green line worn to a frazzle by Ballard's
battering rushes, unable to beat back the victorious enemy, the Bannister
cohorts, dismayed, saw the start of the fourth and final quarter, their
last hope.
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