real clue to the way the 1906 match has faded from history. It w

SAN DIEGO -- Rookie defensive end Joey Bosa finally made it back onto the field for the San Diego Chargers on Tuesday after a long holdout.From a fitness perspective, coach Mike McCoy said the No. 3 pick in this years draft looked fine.He looked as we expected, McCoy said. He was in shape and ready to roll. He looked the way he did when he left.Bosa missed 31 days and three preseason games during a nasty contract spat that included disagreement over payment of Bosas $17 million signing bonus and whether the contract would have offset language. He eventually signed Monday and Bosa said hes capable of playing in the opener on Sept. 11 at the Kansas City Chiefs.First, the Chargers wrap up the preseason schedule on Thursday hosting the San Francisco 49ers but Bosas not expected to play.Its not up to me, its up to the coaches, he said. And they have a plan and they are going to do whatever they feel is necessary.Bosa said his teammates have welcomed him with open arms.Theyre aware of the business of the NFL and why I wasnt here, Bosa said. There is no bad blood between any of us. They are just excited to have me out there and Im excited to be out there.Nose tackle Ryan Carrethers said Bosa returned to the fold easily.It wasnt like he was a new guy showing up, said Carrethers. He was already with us in the spring.Its the training camp workouts that he missed.Bosa acknowledged Monday was a long day as he did extra work with Chargers coaches to learn the schemes.It is what Ive got to do to get back to speed, he said. Im planning to do the same today.What Bosa hasnt done is deliver hits or absorb one. The Chargers workouts are light this week with them playing two games in five days.I still havent put pads on, he said. So Im sure that is going to be the toughest thing to get accustomed to.---Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP-NFL Teemu Selanne Jersey Large . Kuznetsov, who was selected by the Capitals in the first round of the 2010 NHL Entry Draft, has been playing for his hometown team Chelyabinsk Traktor of the KHL. Cheap Ducks Jerseys . -- Bryant McKinnie came out of his stance and lowered his shoulder into a practice squad player, causing a crisp thud to reverberate in the Miami Dolphins practice bubble. http://www.customducksjersey.com/ . Perhaps Carroll was so prepared for a break because he believes there is very little the Seattle Seahawks need heading into the off-season. "I dont see anything that we need to add. We just have to get better," Carroll said. Teemu Selanne Jersey Large . That gave fans outside Joe Louis Arena another chance to ask for autographs from the 19-year-old whose stardom in the NHL has arrived earlier than most expected. Cheap Custom Ducks Jersey . Vettel, who has already clinched his fourth straight F1 title, enters the finale with a chance to equal Michael Schumachers 13 victories in a year and match the record of nine consecutive wins by Alberto Ascari in the 1952 and 1953 seasons. Its a funny thing, historical memory. The match between Scotland and South Africa which took place 110 years ago this week, on 17 November 1906, should have an honoured place alongside Wales defeat of the All Blacks a year earlier and Englands triumph in Obolenskys match nearly three decades later.It was historic, whatever the outcome had been, as the first international played by the Springboks on British soil. That it was against Scotland -- beginning a sequence during the inaugural Boks tour in which all four home nations were played on consecutive weekends -- was no fluke since the invitation to visit had followed the Lions tour, led by the great Scottish forward Mark Morrison, to South Africa three years earlier.Maybe it is something to do with the comparatively limited literature on the Scottish game -- it merits only a couple of lines in RJ Phillipss 1925 history, paling rather into insignificance alongside the epic chapter which Welsh writers Dai Smith and Gareth Williams devote to the 1905 match in their Fields of Praise. And for some reason the Boks have never weighed quite as heavy as the All Blacks in the collective memory of the British game.But by the time they pitched up at Hampden Park -- a venue permitting a Scottish record attendance of 32,500 -- in mid-November, the Boks were looking every bit as formidable as the All Blacks had done a year earlier. They had carved through a succession of English opponents and only been checked to any extent when they entered Wales and were flummoxed by the local methods -- under the then rules of the scrum -- for securing both loose head and put-in.Even then it did not take them long to grasp what was happening -- and to respond in kind. Both Glamorgan and Newport gave the tourists tough games and held them to single figures, a distinction shared with only Middlesex among their first 15 opponents. But they could not beat the Boks, who retained a 100 per cent record from those 15 matches, with a points difference of 354 against 21 and only three tries conceded, when they arrived at Hampden.They had the mutual understanding built up by touring teams -- and it doubtless did no harm that their centres, Japie Krige and Boy de Villiers were also cousins. But they were inevitably lacking in international experience, since it was South Africas first Test since the Lions had departed three years earlier, and fielded 10 debutants. Tour captain Paul Roos, a formidable figure on and off the field, was out with a knee injury, so they were led by his deputy Paddy Carolin.The Scots, recuperating from a disappointing 1906 championship campaign during which they beat only Ireland, contented themselves with four newcomers, all in a pack which also included three medical men. Their threequarter line included two 18-year-olds, the wing Lewis MacLeod and Yokohama-born centre Maurice Walter, who a year earlier had turned down selection for England to opt for the Scots.But their real weapon was the weather. It had rained for two days before the match. The ground was in a terrible condition, Carolin was to recall. And we scarcely enjoyed our first experience of trying to play football in mud up to our ankles with a ball as heavy as lead and as slippery as an eel.Scotland, by contrast, enjoyed themselves hugely in conditions perfect for the rampaging feet, Scotland, feet style of forward play. As Carolin admitted, We were beaten to a frazzle by a wonderful set of forwards. Driven on by David Bedell-Sivright, arguably the hardest of Scotlands many notable hard men, they took no prisoners -- three Boks spent time off the field injured. Forward Dietlof Mare, later the author of the first rugby book in Afrikaans, ended his only international match with two broken fingers.Yet there was no score in the first half, and it took a moment of opportunistic brilliance to break the deadlock soon after the restart. Half-back Pat Munro kicked across the field to the right wing where the prodigious MacLeod took a superb catch and strode past a series of tacklers to the line. Centre Tennant Sloan was to say many years later that, I saw it all right, and ran for it, but couldnt get near it. It was only MacLeods tremendous pace that allowed him to get under the ball and he caught it safely at full pace.Even then the outcome remained in doubt until wing Alexander Purves, one of three London Scottish players in the line-up, touched down after a foot rush by the Scottish pack, although Krige claimed ever after to have got theere first.ddddddddddddFor the Scots, the 6-0 victory was the prelude to one of their best ever seasons, with 1907 delivering a Triple Crown and championship. Purves followed his try against the Boks with another in each of the championship matches, part of a run of six consecutive scoring appearances.Yet neither of their teenage prodigies enjoyed the long international careers that had seemed in store for them. Walter died of meningitis at 22. MacLeod, a truly extraordinary all-round ballplayer who might have played for Scotland at 15 if his head teacher at Fettes had allowed it and also played cricket for Lancashire and football for Manchester City, quit at 20 following the death of his elder brother George, a team-mate on his debut against the All Blacks a year earlier.But at least three of the other backs were to attain off-field distinction. Munro joined the Sudan Civil Service, returned after a distinguished career to become a Conservative MP and died on a Home Guard exercise in 1942. Sloan too joined the imperial civil service and was knighted for his achievements in India.None, though, managed anything as colourful as their captain Louis Greig, a naval doctor who earned the undying regard of the royal family by diagnosing and treating the duodenal ulcer afflicting Prince Albert. That regard transmuted into a lifetime as father-figure, adviser and confidant to the prince, destined to become George VI. When Greig died in 1953, the range and influence of his acquaintances was reflected at a funeral which his grandson and biographer Geordie -- editor of the Mail on Sunday -- has recorded was attended by the five senior members of the royal family, Winston Churchill, J Arthur Rank, representatives of Catford dog track, the All-England tennis club and the Scotland rugby team, along with six waiters from the Dorchester Hotel who took the morning off to be there.The Boks rebounded from their initial set-back, seeing off Ireland 15-12 in a seesawing struggle in Belfast highlighted by a superb long-range try by mercurial Irish centre Basil MacLear, Wales -- who would go down to the Boks again in 1912, but not lose at home to any other opponent between 1899 and 1913 -- 11-0 at Swansea and drawing 3-3 with England at Crystal Palace.The Welsh writer WJ Townsend Collins, comparing the two great pioneering touring teams, would conclude that: The All Blacks were professors convinced of the correctness of their theories, satisfied with themselves, confident of their mission and their ability to teach. The Springboks were students anxious to learn, and at the end they were a very great team. The Springboks conception of combination was better than the All Blacks, their passing was better.And their successors remembered those lessons. The next four Springbok teams -- in 1912, 1931, 1951 and 1960 -- recorded clean sweeps of the home nations. It was not until 1965, on a short tour of Ireland and Scotland riven by the politics endemic to the South African game under apartheid, that they lost again to any of the home nations, going down first 9-6 to a late penalty by Irish full-back Tom Kiernan and then, a week later, 8-5 to an even later drop-goal by Scotlands outside-half Davie Chisholm.Here perhaps is the real clue to the way the 1906 match has faded from history. It was the falsest of false dawns, a defeat on their first outing that was not to be repeated for 59 years and 19 matches (22 if you add in the defeats handed to Scotland, Ireland and Wales when single-country tours of South Africa began in the 1960s). Nor were the Lions to win a series in South Africa until 1974, with six teams between 1910 and 1969 achieving only four victories in 22 tests. The nilling inflicted on the Boks in their first Test on British and Irish soil has yet to be repeated in 83 matches (including 12 World Cup ties) spread over 110 years since.It is time, perhaps, that the memory should be revived. The victory in 1906 deserves to be remembered as one of the great days in Scottish rugby history and the achievements of that seasons team to rank alongside those of 1925, 1933, 1938, 1984, 1990 and 1999. Greater, perhaps, given that none of those teams also managed to beat a major touring team (although the 1984 team came desperately close, drawing 25-25 with the All Blacks), never mind one that would then go unscathed for another 59 years. ' ' '