PROFESSIONALISM IN SPORT

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20955, 8 September 1933, Page 8

PROFESSIONALISM IN SPORT

Warning to New Zealand EXAMPLE OF WRESTLING Professionalism in sport was strongly condemned by Dr. R. Lawson. of Otago University, in his Wilding Memorial Lecture delivered at Canterbury College last evening. After referring to the degeneracy which overtook the Greek ideal of beauty he said that the reason was simply over-competition and professionalism in spirt.

"The all-round physical development of the great age of Greece." he said, "gave way to specialised training, brute strength replaced harmonious development, money prizes and bribery fostered the avaricious man and drove out the amateur. If is a sad page of history for the lover of Greece. "In New Zealand so far our great sports of cricket, football, and tennis are free from taint. Let us beware lest we over-commercialise them, lest we make competition so keen as to make it impossible for the amateur to be a participant. Already we see our cricketers being tempted aw ay. The great series of cricket test matches between England and Australia have had their fame dimmed by intense competition and undue publicity.

"Parasitic Growth.'' "The essence of sport is that it shall be spontaneous. Professionalism is the negation of sport, or rather it is a parasitic growth upon the natural plant of healthy strength, skill, and emulation. There are symptoms that tennis, by its over-stimulated competition, is thrusting its leading exponents into professionalism. Shall we see here a degeneracy of a type, the reappearance of the sub-man as depicted on the Greek vases? Are we to see our cricket and football and tennis sink to the level of presentday wrestling? I judge this last by representations on the cinema, where I have seen faces and expressions that have made me shudder." The fact that a professional fighter could gain more gold in one fight after a few months' training, said Dr. Lawson, than an honest and clever man could gain in a lifetime was subversive of life's values and very pernicious, therefere, in its effect upon the young. "Of course, I do not dub professionalism bad in itself," he added. "In moderation there is always a place for it, but it should always be part of some sport in which it may render service by coaching and by setting standards of achievement. Professional wrestling at present is merely a means of making money by providing unwholesome excitement in a contest of whose nature the spectators have no amateur experience."