FIELD SPORTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1942, 7 February 1889, Page 25

FIELD SPORTS.

" Modern Amateur Athletics " is the heading of a most interesting letter from the pen of Mr" John Edmond, jun., which appeared in a recent issue of the Daily Times. Mr Edmond com-" mences his subject by expressing regret at the comparatively small amount of interest taken in Otago at present in field sports. The decadence of cricket he puts down to the want of propef organisation. " Running, walking, leaping, &c.,'' he continues, " are only moderately in, and principally by those who desire to make money. Gymnastics, too, does not receive the support it; deserves. Cycling is too expensive for the masses ; boating is somewhat exclusive ; and so on down the melancholy list of pastimes, all ol them of a directly beneficial tendency, Buffering from atrophy. Football is the only one sport of an athletic character which is vigorously prosecuted, and from it many are necessarily excluded because they lack the essential robustness." This state of affairs he attributes primarily to the lack of organisation, bnt in the case of athletics to the fact of the money element having " insidiously insinuated itself into one after another of them. The moment a pursuit becomes the subjeot of betting, a blight seems to settle upon it. Instead of the athletea contending for the valueless but honourable parsley wreath of older times, wo find them prematurely acute in the art of getting money, and petty and degrading scheming usurping the place of fair and honourable competition. Athletes have become diverted from their proper functions, which is not the acquisition of money directly, but the cultivation of those abilities with which we are endowed, the creation of nerve, and the establishment of health, and therefore of a higher degree of mental excellence."

After again .referring to the importance of co-operation and the establishment of associations for the purpose of checking the decadence of athletic sports, Mr Edmond concludes : — M I lay great stress upon the absolute purity of games. They must be kept entirely free from the objectionable betting element. Nor should the prizes at any exhibition of comparative skill be of great money value I must not be misunderstood to be decrying professional sport, because it furnishes us with standards of perfection. It is the mixture of it with amateur sport, and the infinite number of gradations resultant from the connection which now estranges the public to the amateur, and must ultimately ruin the professional"

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