OUTDOOR SPORTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 18601, 31 December 1920, Page 7

OUTDOOR SPORTS.

WHY BAN THE PROFESSIONAL? REPLY TO~“VERITAS.”

TO THB EDITOR. Sir,—-Your contributor," Veritas ’’ in his disquisition on sport and its evil tendencies in this morning’s “ Times ” has either said too much or not enough. What is he driving at, anyway If his remarks arc intended to warn New Zealand against tho dangers of specialisation and professionalism in games, why does he choose the one period in New Zealand’s history when specialisation and professionalism arc least in evidence for the delivery of his solemn reproof P Might I suggest to "Veritas” that specialists and professionals, symptoms, as he says, that “ sport is being taken too seriously,” are preferable to a barrenness of champions which to my mind connotes that we are not taking our play seriously. enough. Can one take sport too seriously? Hardly, if “ Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”

“ Veritas ” speaks of tho “ essential qualities which make for the real value of our sports,” and later on of sport as “something which need not be taken Beriously.” The ethics of play as I was taught them some deendes ago were to do your damndest to win, inside the rules, to play for your side and not for yourself, and to take ai licking without. getting hot under the .collar. I gathered, and I presume most of „my contemporaries did, too, that if a’game were worth playing at all it should he played with the whole of one’s will aud strength, and with such intellect as one possessed. Without such a spirit in sport, how are wo going to “promote the vigour—physical, mental and moral —of the race,” as “ Veritas ” saya we should? A generation which lakes its sport in this spirit ’is hardly likely to get along very far without professionalism of some kind or another. It will create its own demand for them as trainers, instructors and exemplars in their art-. D'oes “ Veritas ” think that tho presence in Sydney just now of an English cricket team, many of the members of which are professionals, will fail to inspire renewed interest in cricket among the thousands of spectators of the test, matches ?

The professional in sport is probably a loss to tho ranks of industry and production (though that by no means follows in the case of the wealthy amateur), but if wo make production tho ono test of human worth we will have to do without a good deal that makes life worth living. We must send Madame Carreno to the washtub and Caruso to the road-gang, and banish the whole world of art which flourishes only where there is a leisured and. cultured class to support it. The professional in some sports may be a bad lot and exercise a bad influence, but not in all sports. I think that one result, of New Zealanders taking real sport more seriously than they do would be to double the number of professional golfers, cricketers and footballers ar.d reduce the number of professional jockeys. Yonng men may watch racehorses for a month of Sundays and never come near being such good sports as the horses are, but I dofy the same youngsters to take similar doses of firstclass cricket, golf, lawn tennis, boxing, general athletics or football without wishing to take a more active part than that of spectator in such pastimes. T don’t want to see sport commercialised any more than “ Veritas ” does. Where I part company with him is that lie regards tho sport specialist as an evil, wliile I see him as 'a source of emulation and inspiration.—l am j etc., OLD CODGER. .December 30.