But there are days nevertheless when every coach gets discouraged; times when there is no response from the men he is coaching—­when their slowness of mind and body seem to justify the despair of Charlie Daly who said to his team: 

“You fellows are made of crockery from the neck down and ivory from the neck up.”

Football is fickle.  To-day you may be a hero.  After the last game you may be carried off on the shoulders of enthusiastic admirers and dined and wined by hosts of friends; but across the field there is a grim faced coach who may already be scheming out a play for next year which will snatch you back from the “Hall of Fame” and make your friends describe you sadly as a “back-number.”

Haughton arrived at Harvard at the psychological moment.  Harvard had passed through many distressing years playing for the football supremacy.  He found something to build upon, because, although the game at Cambridge was in the doldrums, there had been keen and capable coaching in the past.

Prominent among those who have worked hard for Harvard and whose work has been more than welcome, are Arthur Cumnock, that brilliant end rush, George Stewart, Doctor William A. Brooks, a former Harvard captain, Lewis, Upton, John Cranston, Deland, Hallowell, Thatcher, Forbes, Waters, Newell, Dibblee, Bill Reid, Mike Farley, Josh Crane, Charlie Daly, Pot Graves, Leo Leary, and others well versed in the game of football.

Haughton had had some experience not only in coaching at Cambridge but coaching at Cornell, and the Harvard football authorities realized that of all the Harvard graduates Haughton would probably be the best man to turn the tide in Harvard football.

Percy, who played tackle on a winning Crimson eleven, and Sam Felton will be well remembered as the fastest punters of their day.

The first Harvard team coached by Haughton defeated Yale.  It was in 1908 when Haughton used a spectacular method, when he rushed Vic Kennard into the Crimson backfield after Ver Wiebe had brought the ball up the field where Haughton’s craft sent Vic Kennard in to make the winning three points and Kennard himself will tell the story of that game.  The next year Percy Haughton’s team could not defeat the great Ted Coy, who kicked two goals from the field.

The performance of the Harvard 1908 team was the more remarkable because Burr, who was the captain and the great punter at that time, had been injured and the team was without his services.  How well I remember him on the side lines keenly following the play, but brilliant in his self-denial.

There have been times when victories did not come to Harvard with the regularity that they have under the Haughton regime, but the scales go up and down year by year, game by game, and from defeats we learn much.

Let us read what this premier coach says upon reflection: 

“Surely the game of football brings out the best there is in one.  Aside from the mental and physical exercise, the game develops that inestimable quality of doing one’s best under pressure.  What better training for the game of life than the acid test of a championship game.  Such a test comes not alone to the player but to the coach as well.