PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2849, 21 October 1908, Page 37

PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL.

TOO MUCH SECRECY. (From Oce Own Correspondent ) LONDON, September 4. The exact charges which have boon brought against the New Zealand Rugby •Union for failing to deal with professionalism are now being levelled at the English Union. At present things are in rather a critical state here, and it seems as if tho English Union was just as little competent as the New Zealand body to act with decision, promptitude, and frankness. In this morning's Daily Mail there is a shrieking indictment signed by "Bunjara," who voioc3 the opinion of many prominent Rugby amateurs. Ho says: — "For a long time now the policy of the Rugby Union has bsen one of privacy and of communicating to the public through the press as little as it pessibly can. Since the annual meeting in May nothing has been heard of what the Rugby Union has done in the matter of veiled professionalism. Can it ■be that they are ashamed of such thoroughly unbusinesslike methods' as thoee which I have quoted above?" Then "Bunjara" gees on to tell the bald truth of the position in terms that fit closely the case in New Zealand: — " How long is this puerile policy of procrastination going to hang over tho management of the finest outdoor winter game invented? I did not admire tho action of the Scottish Union and its imitators on the other side of that wretched channel between Stranraer and Lame last season when it refused to play in our yard, and thereby allowed a hotch-potch •«de to be sent to New Zealand, and did

not nesitate to denounce such aloofness. But really one begins to wonder whether there was not some justification for the Scots'' abstention from having anything to do with such prehistoric management. The bedrock fact remains that the Rugby game is in serious danger unless immediate and drastic action is taken. It is all very well to say that the professional game removes all the undesirable elements. Such element properly managed and controlled in the first instance does not become undesirable, and a reasonable leavening of the bricklayer element with that of our public schools does the tone and body of the game a vast amount of gcod. With rare exceptions, our schools are beginning to produce too many drawing-room players. A "judicious .admixture of navvies with these is essential, or the game ceases to be Rugby footba.ll. But the bricklayer and the navvy and the collier must be fair and square amateurs. Any number of them would, if some unctuous official had not dangled a sovereign before their eyes. The whole root of veiled professionalism is official mismanagement, and as things have gone of late years, nobody can accuse the Rugby Union in an admittedly difficult case of the minor clubs a good example."