The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1907. THE PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 136, 8 June 1907, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1907. THE PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM.

mar the cease trntt lack* eaaUtmtea. War the term* that weeds remittance, War the future te the iistamce, And the gee* that vie east is. SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1907.

The New Zealand. Rugby Union caa certainly claim that it "has done everything in its power to prevent the introduction of professionalism into our national game. The task has been difficult and unpleasant; but the Union officials have the satisfaction of knowing that they have the sympathy of all lovers of true sport not only in this colony but in Australia as well. In Sydney, the home of Australian Rugby, the feeling against professionalism is evidently strong, and we may congratulate ourselves that there is now no risk of being told by our Australian friends that we have sent them a team under false colours. The Attorney-General of New South Wales, who spoke yesterday in Sydney on professionalism, was in his time one of the finest Rugby backs that ever played the game; indeed, during his University career at Home he was classed with Bolton and Stoddart as one of the greatest threequarters ever seen in England. Mr. Wade's opinion on such a question is therefore extremely valuable; and his view, based on a wide experience of the game, is that the advent of professionalism means that the higher aspects of the game must inevitably disappear. Professional football necessarily tends to become at once sordid and brutal; and the supporters of Australian Rugb* are at least as enthusiastic as ourselves in their praise of the New Zealand Rugby Union for its courageous effort to keep the sport under their control clear from such noxious and deteriorating influences.

We are not in a position to say whether an attempt will still bo made to <*et a team together from among those players who have hot declared themselves amateurs, or who have not been chosen for the Australian trip. So far as the constitution of such a team is concerned, we agree with the Sydney "Daily Telegraph" that the strength of our amateur fifteen as picked for the Australian tour indicates clearly enough that there is very little hope of getting together a body of professionals in any sense representative of New Zealand football. This is as it should be; and we believe that those players who should be most heartily congratulated on the failure of this project are the men who have had some thought of taking part in it. From the point of view of the players themselves, it seems to us that such a trip offered no inducement of any real value. The Northern Union coders but a small area in England; and anyone who reads the account of its position and prospects furnished us this week by the ex-captain of one of the Northern Union clubs will cease to imagine that the pecuniary prospects of such a tour could be very brilliant. The Northern Union is on the down grade, and

this offer to a New Zealand team is evidently a.n attempt to bolster up the clubs by the aid of the prestige and popularity of the famous " All Blacks." As to the future of the individual players forming such a team, they would, of course, be permanently classed as professionals; and for a time they might draw their £4 a week at the game. But when they get past their prime they could only expect to be dropped. '•' Wales," says the authority to whom we have referred, "is full of derelict players from the Northern Union"'; and they cannot expect much consideration or generosity from an organisation whose main object is not sport, but money. But we doubt if our footballers have realised the nature of the position that even a successful player of the firsli rank accepts when he " signs on" for a professional club. The "Daily MaU" recently published a letter from a weUknown professional attached to a Southern League dub, protesting against the tyranny which prevented him from leaving the district where he was engaged. " It is footbaU slavery/ says the player, j" that is the only way to describe it. I 'don't like the people here; I can't get on with the players; yet I am forced to ! remain or give up the game." Yet we are told that "the player has no obvi- | ous remedy. He must do as he is told. LAn offer of £4 a week binds him hard, ihead and foot." This is the sort of ! thing our footballers would have to face if they engaged themselves with the professional clubs at Home. No wonder the " Daily Mail" declares that the wage system is wrong, and that the i whole theory of professionalism in football is wrong. New Zealand football can get on very well without the men who want to make a living out of tbe game; but for their own sake we hope that they will be wise in time, and I drop this ill-conceived and dangerous project for ever.