ATHLETIC SPORTS GOVERNMENT.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 112, 4 February 1908, Page 6

ATHLETIC SPORTS GOVERNMENT.

The dissatisfaction of local athletes with certain aspects of the proceedings of the Council of the Athletic Association is one of those now frequent results of modern high development of sports government. In football, in cricket, and in practically every popular Anglo-Saxon sport, thero are nowadays so many "crises" embroiling such wide and excited publics, that it is impossible to quarrel with the whimsically sarcastic view that Mr. A. C. Benson voiced for old-fashioned people in one of his " Upton Letters." " It requires almost more courage to write about games nowadays," said Mr. Benson', '" than it does to write about .the Decalogue, because the higher criticism is tending to make a belief in the Decalogue a matter of taste, while to the ordinary Englishman a belief-in 1 games is a matter of faith and morals.'' In the present instance, taking our courage in both, hands, we venture to. sympathise with the purpose of tonight's meeting of the Wellington Centre of the Association, For a considerable time past some of the Centres have been gravely dissatisfied with what, in this age of serious sport, we need not apologise for the want of a generous Federal spirit in the parent body. There is constant, bickering over the financial problems of athletic sports government. On Saturday night one of the Council's delegates, in announcing the personnel of the New Zealand athletic team that has been selected under th,e curious , circumstances set forth in another-col-umn, invited the local Centre fo pay the expenses of a certain Wellington athlete who otherwise, it would 'appear-, would not be sent to Hobart to represent the Dominion at the Australasian Championship Meeting. Local athletic enthusiasts are, naturally enough, indignant at this ill-chosen attempt by the Council representatives to evade responsibility. Either the athlete in question should be selected, or he should not, and if the former his expenses should be paid by the parent body, which.<\is financially, strong, and whicli has, therefore, no excuse for its narrow attitude. The movement to have the headqitorters. of the Association removed to tliis city,, wherfe athletic sports are flourishing vigorously, is a not unnatural outcome of the .present Council's grudging policy. Upon the wisdom of such a change we offer no opinion—-that -is primarily a matter for the /experts'.-' All the circumstances connected with the present situation, however, make up a very strong.defence of the indignation of local athletes. The running track, has practically become the last remaining stronghold of the true amateur spirit 'in. Australasia; and it'."-is; therefore, a subject of concern even to those people to games are-not "a' matter of faith and morals" that that stronghold shall not .be, weakened by bad government. •■■•/ • ,