Irish striker struck the goalpost in the Wales versus Ireland international match at Wrexham in 1906. For further details see Vanessa Toulmin, "Edwardian Sport on Film", International Journal of Sport in History, volume 26, no. 2 (2006). Rugby league and cricket matches were also featured, and when A.D. Thomas, who styled himself "the picture king, the mastermind of the world", heard of a cricketing scandal where the respected Lancashire bowler Arthur Mold was repeatedly no-balled by the umpire, Jim Phillips, he promptly commissioned a filmed re-enactment of Mold's bowling to prove that his technique was valid – the first action replay, which was a popular success. Other films featured rowing events, horse trotting, athletics, cycle races and motor tricycle races. Comedy As early as 1900 some fiction films included slapstick comedy with blundering policemen, in anticipation of the Keystone Kops and Charlie Chaplin more than a decade later. Diving Lucy of 1903 showed a lady's legs sticking up out of a pond in Blackburn's Queen's Park, and rescuers setting up a plank which a tubby policeman goes out on only to find it a hoax, at which the others let go and he falls in the water. It was an international success, in France and the U.S. where it was billed as "the hit British comedy of the year". To enliven some street scenes the showmen arranged for mock fights or hosing down a spectator, and slapstick was added to park scenes with male actors dressed as women falling off a donkey or in the water from a boat, revealing their petticoats under the long skirts of the time. Decline In May 1907 Sagar Mitchell resumed possession of his original business, S. & J. Mitchell, at 40 Northgate, Blackburn. The volume of film production seems to have tailed off from this date, and from 1909 was increasingly restricted to local events. By the mid-1900s the taste of audiences for seeing themselves was fading, and more structured films were coming into vogue and the company concentrated on their fictional output. The last surviving film dates from 1913. Mitchell was joined in his business by his son John in 1921. His partnership with Kenyon was formally dissolved around 1922 and Kenyon died in 1925. Mitchell carefully stored the film negatives away in the basement of his shop. He lived to the age of 85, and died on 2 October 1952. John continued