RELICS YET OF AMATEUR SNOBBERY

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 129, 3 June 1922, Page 4

RELICS YET OF AMATEUR SNOBBERY

Those who argue that any athlete who receives money in return for his athletics should be classed a professional cannot be said to be without a case. The line between a professional's pay and an amateur's expenses is sometimes a very thin one; and BJob.bs, the Surrey cricketer, does not commit an irrelevance when, in replying to Armstrong's remarks on English cricket professionalism, he cites the fact that Australia's touring amateur cricketers receive a substantial solatium. But, whatever is to be said in J favour of the stricter view of professionalism that prevails in some of the English sports, there appears to be "nothing to be said in defence of the following rule of one of the ■principal English rowing clubs: Np person shall be considered an amateur oarsman, sculler, or coxswain who is,1, or has been, by trade or employment j by wages, a mechanic, artisan, or labourer, or engaged in any menial duty. Our Australian correspondent, in a recent* issue, cited this rule as . a bar to competition at Henley by the champion amateur eight of Australia, who were wishing to enter for the English championships, but who are " menials" in the terms of the above rule, as they include a locomotive engine fireman, a locomotive engine driver, aiitter, a postal clerk, a captain of a river steamer, and a carpenter. If the position is as our correspondent < states, the exclusionist attitude of English amateur rowing is much to be deplored. In any case, the " principal club" that fathers this definition of " amateur " is guilty of the worst form of snobbishness. While amateurism may or may not object to an athlete receiving any payment for Mb athletics, it has

absolutely no right to object to the manner in which he earns his living, provided that his living is honestly earned. There is a dignity in all honest labour. The abject class-consciousness of the " principal club" is the sort of thing that encourages the classconsciousness of Bolshevism; and it is an affront to all workers who have^ not sufficient sense to value its snob-authors at' their* true worth. ■■-<. .'■■,••