CHAOTIC LAWS ON PROS. AND AMATEURS

Northern Advocate, 5 January 1938, Page 6

CHAOTIC LAWS ON PROS. AND AMATEURS

Somebody said to me ‘‘Will Hammond, who announces that he is giving up cricket as a professional, be reinstated as an amateur?” stated Percy Rudd, in the “News Chronicle.” The question focuses attention on the chaotic state of our laws with regard to amateurs and professionals in sport.

Cricket is one of the few games in which amateurs and professionals in sport. Cricket is one of the few games in which amateurs and professionals play side by side without any fuss. Hammond's transference from the one status to the other is automatic and involves no question of reinstatement. The M.C.C.’s permission is neither required nor sought. Different In Other Games.

How different it is at other games! A professional at Socecr football, if he desires to play as an amateur must first obtain the F.A/s permission to do so, and this is not always granted. In Rugby football “once a professional always a professional” is the code.

In point of fact, the law is even stricter than this slogan suggests. If you play an amateur with professionals in Rugby League football you are banned for ever from the Rugby Union game.

An out-of-work Welshman might go up to Wigan or Huddersfield, have a trial with the local professional team, prove unsatisfactory and return home. If he is found out his playing days at Rugby football are over, Case of Grenville Morris.

In lawn tennis, which is accused of harbouring more pseudo-amateurism than any other game, with the possible exception of ice-hockey, the ban is put up not only against its own professionals, present or past, at other sports.

Thus, if Hammond wore a first-class tennis player he would not be allowed, even now that he has ceased to be a professional cricketer, to compete at Wimbledon or in any open competition.

There was some years ago the notable case of Grenville Morris, a retired professional footballer, who happened to be a good tennis player and who applied to the L.A.A. for permission to take part in open tournaments, but was not allowed to do so. Morris is now a professional tennis co/ich.

Golf Like Cricket. In golf, as in cricket, professionals can and do play side-by-side with amateurs, but I have never heard of a full-time professional golfer being reinstated as an amateur and permitted to take part in amateur competitions. Probably the explanation of this lies in . the fact that golf provides a life career for its professors.