Leaves Of A Sportfolio--

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7298, 27 October 1933, Page 10

Leaves Of A Sportfolio--

"PUGBY UNION football now has two A* international controlling bodies, but the three great overseas Rugby countries. South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, arc not represented on either. Only in sentiment, not in practical international organisation, are the three units of the British Empire which are celebrated for tlicir prowess in the ..game in any better position for international diplomacy in Rugby than arc the countries, such as Japan, Argentina, and Canada, in which Rugby Union football is a comparatively recent ■growth. The position is not merely illogical—to anyone who is not steeped to -stupidity in the insularity of British Rugby legislators and administrators it must appear as absurd. It is high time that something like a British Empire Rugby Board was formed. Rugby-playing countries on the Continent of Europe have long since given up whatever faint hopes they might have held of gaining representation on what is pleased to call itself the International Rugby Football Board-—a body which should really be called the United Kingdom and Ireland Rugby Board. The use of the word “international” should imply a readiness to admit to membership nations which qualify by progress and self-control in the game. The borders of sport have widened enormously since representatives of the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish Rugby unions constituted the body which arrogated to itself the international title. That board was -formed long after Rugby had become well established in New Zealand, New South Wales, and South Africa, and even many years after it had been introduced into France. But now, 4a years after the formation of the seltstvled International Board, the board s membership is still restricted to the “Home” unions, and there is still a lack of anv genuine indication that it will ever be widened. In this instance the virtue of patience has been atrophied into a vice. # The Continental countries have solved their own present part of the problem of international co-opcration in Rugby in their own way. At a meeting in Turin, last month, delegates irom France, Spain, Czechoslovakia, and Italy, who were supported by Germany, formed an International Rugby Federation. As this organisation does include several different nations, and it allows for expansion, it is entitled to the use of the title “International.” The sound arguments in favour of the formation ol this body are well summarised by the celebrated Parisian paper “L’Auto, when it states the main two reasons . why it approves of the move. The first reason is that “if such a federation is not founded now in the early days ot the game on the Continent the sport will find itself in the same position as boxing”—a position which I discussed recently. The second reason is that “no agreement can be reached with the British, and since this is so we must reach an agreement among ourselves. The second reason is, of course, the main one why New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa—and possibly Canada —should form an intcr-Dominion organisation.

44 * 44 An important qualification of international organisation in Rugby has not been overlooked in Europe. We must not lose sight of the fact, adds the Parisian paper quoted, ‘that Rugby is a British game, and as long as the Continent wants to play real Rugby it must follow more or less closely the British rules.” * 41 * The formation of the International Rugby Federation opens up a wide vista in the organisation and control of the game. Yet one may be pardoned tor fearing that British Rugby legislators and administrators, as a class, will fail to notice that vista. The British leaders of the game, no doubt, will continue to mouth platitudes about loyalty to the Motherland, and so on. Loyalty to the Motherland is a perfectly proper and most commendable sentiment, but tne leaders in the administration of Rugby who continue to deny the right of the overseas Dominions to a measure of Representation in international org..nisation are themselves disloyal to the Empire, and their use of the cry about loyalty, as a means of denying that right, is improper. # 44 w Procrastination is not only the thief of time; it is also the means by which British Rugby legislators and administrators, in general, refuse to admit reason, and the means by which the administrators of the game in the over-

seas Dominions have allowed themselves to lie relegated to third place in progress toward international organisation of Rugby. -X- 44- 44 yiTIIEN I was wandering round some »» cricket grounds a few days ago, watching players at practice, I met a man who made me “come all over sentimental” about the game. After delving into a pocket, my friend produced a piece of paper, and then declaimed the following lines by E. V. Lucas, the celebrated English author, much of whose work is permeated by love of cricket: Willow and cane, nothing blit that —• O. but it’s glorious, swinging the bat! Leather and thread, there you have all— O, but it's glorious, gripping the ball! Grass at our feet, and the sun overhead. Here let us play tilt the evening is red. Then to our dinner, and lustily siny, Cricket’s the King of games. Cricket is King! vf * W It is, I think, the great strength ot cricket that it gives so much scope for the free play of sentiment without that play of sentiment connoting any weakness of character, in cither the game or the player who feels the sensibility. In the refined sentiment of cricket—and bv “refined” I do not mean “genteel”—lies the true humour of ihe game—humour in its older sense of temper or mood, not the sense of freakishness or comicality. Any game that is worth playing has its own peculiar call to the inner spirit of a man, and it is significant that every game whose appeal to manknd has extended beyond a narrow orbit has its own literature of appreciation. Cricket’s literature of appreciation happens to be greater, and more expressively sentimental, than that of any oilier athletic pursuit simply because the tempo ot cricket gives more opportunity for this appreciation. For that reason, while 1 wish to see our club cricket brightened, I do not wish to sec its tempo so hurried that good points of play and opportunity for noting adequately any departure from llie code of sportsmanship should be lost in a flurry of speed. * '«■ Yet, as a great English critic of cricket lias bad occasion to remind us lately, sentimentalism should not be allowed to degenerate into cant. A good deal has been heard lately about “the spirit of the game,” anil about “playing the game for the game’s sake”—in Rugbv as well as in cricket. The spirit o r any game lias an element of something‘more than merely playing a game for the sake of a little exercise; it has an clement of a desire to win. A game that is not worth winning is not worth plaving. But the winning must he by fair means, if it is to accord with the spirit of the game. The man who docs not think that the spirit of a game has any element at all of a desire to win might as well go and play tiddlywinks by liimself. in a corner. * 44

Every game that can be played by two people or more has a competitive element, an intention that one side or the other should strive for victory. Its spirit is compounded of sportsmanship, tradition, and the will to win. Any sentimentalising about it which rejects any one of those elements appears to me to be cant. In a team-game the element of sportsmanship is itself a compound, made up of both the will to play the game fairly and the will to plav it for the side, not merely for the‘ individual. The man who departs from sportsmanship, in cither speech or action, in a team-game harms his team and his club, as well as himself. F’or instance, Harold Larwood’s undisciplined outbursts of late, his statement that he would refuse to play for England if he were instructed not to howl “fast leg-theory,” reflect not only upon himself but also upon the cricket temper of liis county and his country, and the temper of Test cricket. 44 44 44 Our own club cricket is really of inore importance to the game than Test cricket, because it lies nearer the heart of cricket. As G. D. Martineau, another English poet of cricket has written: Lord’s and the Oval truly mean Zenith of hard-bought fame; But it was just a village green Mothered and made the game.

The lines of both E. V. Lucas and G. D. Martineau should be brought to the attention of several people who have been concerned in the recent unhappy squabble abroad. They could

also he pondered over—profitably, I hope—by any players or former players who may perchance have had their perceptions of the true spirit of the game dulled by the reverberations of that squabble. * 44 44 Disappointed in ins efforts to arrange match-races in the United States of America, Austin Robertson, the Victorian who is credited with holding the world’s professional sprint championship, is returning to his native country. His fruitless visit was a curious example of lack of foresight .and inquirv, for, as was pointed out on this page at the time Robertson announced that he was going to America, professional running is dead in the United States, and to anyone with any knowledge of the position there Robertson’s trip appeared as nothing better than a leap in the dark. However, his experience. though otherwise of but minor interest. is a reminder of the great change that has come over professional running in the last quarter-century. 44 44 44 The out-and-out professional runner, as distinct from the man who leaves amateurism to gain a living as a coach, is practically an extinct species now. Running for cash prizes lingers on in Australia, the North of England, and a part of Scotland, and, to a lesser extent, in New Zealand, but almost entirely in the form of handicap-running, and its votaries now are men who prefer cash to glory in prizes, but who are not professionals in the sense of having to depend upon the game for a livelihood. They are generally men who depend upon other occupations for their livelihood, although the winning of one of the bigger prizes in Australia is sufficient to keep a man in comfort for some time. The man who depended upon running for a livelihood could not do so for any appreciable length of time nowadays, because match-running lias gone out of favour, and there are very few match-runners left. In matchrunning there was not only the stakemoney to reward the victor; there was also money gaincil from betting. Rut public favour has receded from matchrunning. Match-running did not long survive, except in isolated and dim instances, tlie passing from the track of Jack Donaldson (who died recently), Arthur Postle, and their contemporaries. In the days of these great sprinters the goldfields of Western Australia and South Africa, with their populations avid for changes of excitement, and their attendant gamblers, were profitable fields for professional athletes, and the North of England and Wales also offered them something more than pinmoney. Even before the Great Wai, though, these goldfields were becoming less profitable to professional athletes, and the war practically put a period to the old order of things. The war might have been responsible for acccljrating the change, by making many people eager for change in their patronage of professionalised sport, apart from team-games, but the growth ot greater variety in sporting entertainment in the past 15 years was a condition that was hound to come, war or no war. Professional athletics _ lacked proper organisation, and, even if more exciting sports had not been evolved to tickle the public’s fancy, it was certain to suffer in competition with wellorganised attractions. 44 44 44

In some parts of the world, particularly Victoria, handicap running for cash prizes will continue to play its own comparatively small part, but the day ot out-and-out professional running may he regarded as gone for ever. From individualised professional sport the public demands something more than the running of a hundred yards or a half-mile can give it—an extraneous attraction such as the greater vicarious thrill that is possible from boxing, the “entertainment stunts” of modernised wrestling, the object-lesson of efficiency in golf and so on. The position of individualised amateur sports is very different. "• L.

Ambrose Palmer, heavyweight boxing champion of Australia—he is really only a light-heavyweight—has decided to leave for England toward the end of the year, and look for Lights there. Later he may go to America. His present intention is to travel to England with Nel Tarlcton when that English lightweight returns Home.