FOOTBALL "SLAVERY"

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 52, 29 August 1925, Page 19

FOOTBALL "SLAVERY"

A BISHOP'S DENUNCIATION.

A sermon by the Bishop of Peterborough (Dr. C. C. B. Bardsley), in \ which he spoke of footballers being " bought and sold almost like slaves,' has met with a protest from the president of the Southern League, Mr. A. J. Darnell, of Northampton, says the " Daily Chronicle.' Preaching at a footballers' service at Leicester recently, the Bishop said he regretted the extension of professionalism in football, and added: "It has done an awful lot to ruin our games. I seem to see footballers bought and cold almost' like slaves, and human machines, trained as gladiators. It is the ruin of club patriotism. Football is too good a game to be spoiled." Mr. Darnell's reply is: "Your statement that footballers are bought and sold like slaves is an unwarrantable assertion, and displays crass ignorance and an absolute want of knowledge of what is known as the transfer system. A player is a free agent. He can refuse or ancept, as he thinkß fit. He receives if transferred a substantial proportion of the transfer fee, and it invariably means his promotion to a higher classof football. Professional footballers receive between £6 and £8 a week all the year round, and to talk about slavery under such circumstances is arrant nonsense. I ask your lordship to believe and to recognise that the professional footballer loves the game he plays equally as much as the amateur, and that there ia a great deal of cant and hypocrisy in those who continually boast and vaunt that they alone play for ths love of the game."