" Professional" Football.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 8425, 25 January 1899, Page 4

" Professional " Football.

A writer in the Contemporary, on professionalism in football, says :— The effect of League matches and Cup ties is thoroughly evil Men go in thousands, not to study and admire skill and endurance, but to see their team gain two points of pass into the next round. The end, uot the means, is everything. Rough play, so long as it escapes punishment from the referee, is one means to the end, and delights the crowd. Nothing hut the firmest action by the Association prevents assaults on referees and players. The passions are excited to the Highest pitch of human feeling. The excitement during the match is epidemic, and 20,000 people, torn by emotions of rage and pleasure, roaring condemnation and applause, make ■m alarming spectacle. Eveiy Saturday in winter more than a million people are cheering and hooting round the football grounds. The tendency of it all is towards brutality. Protests are laid on all kinds of grounds, and as very few clubs have clean records, there is no lack of material. Charges are met by counter charges, and all the details are swallowed with avidity by the public. The dirty linen is washed over and over again, and never becomes cleaner. The newspapers fatten upon the garbage ; in fact, the behavior of the press is a most lamentable feature of the foothall mania. One of the worst signs of the times is that the infection is spreading to other games. Professional football is doing more harm every year. Ii has already spread from the North to the South. The Southern clubs held out for a long time, but have succumbed generally during the last two years. The system is bad for the players, worse for the spectators. The former learn improvident habits, become vastly conceited, whilst failing to see that they are treated like chattels and cannot help but be brutalized. The latter arc injured physically ,\nd men ally. Instead of placing theinscKe-, or taking cither I exercise on their half-holidnv, they ztaud still during cold, wet, afternoons on cold, wet ground. The number of live* in. directly sacrificed to football must lie cuorni'ius. As icg.uds morality, the old English feeling for "sport " or "'fairplay' 1 has receded to thinly-populated or remote districts where atlilotio cannot, he exploited for money. Englishmen seem con\crted to French or American methods of spurt: "The uuutli'rablo lomiption of amateur athletic.-, dm ing the last few years need not be dwell upon; the betting and swindling, the feigned names, the M'Hing of laces, pacemaking, that hatefnltraveety of sport, and many other aluise.s arc notorious. Football i^iin the Mine road; ler a- pray that the inherent virtue in cricket may continue to preserve it.'