PROFESSIONALISM IN SPORT.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 November 1935, Page 4

PROFESSIONALISM IN SPORT.

New Zealanders will view with mixed feelings the fact that yet another stalwart in sport, George Nepia, is shortly to leave these shores to take up an appointment as a professional in England. From time to time people have bewailed the loss of some of the best brains of the Dominion, particularly young men of the Rhodes Scholar type, because the Dominion cannot or does not offer them sufficient inducement to stay in the country. And so it is with the best of our sporting men, particularly cricketers and footballers. One has only to recall a few names—Cooke who transferred from Rugby Union football to League, Dacre, Merritt and Cromb, who took up professional cricketing positions in England, Falwasser and Harrison (both of Taranaki), Smith and now Nepia, who have gone to professional football in England to realise how amateur sport is being drained of some of its outstanding personalities. From the players’ point of view they are just as entitled to capitalise their prowess in sport as other human beings are to capitalise their ability in other directions. The pity of it is that many players undertaking the change hardly realise what their decision is leading them to. In many cases disillusionment follows, particularly in the social status in which they find themselves in England; and in the case of footballers the period during which they can command good remuneration is of necessity comparatively brief. There is also an indefinable satisfaction in amateur sport which once lost is very difficult to regain. Be that as it may, no doubt the players concerned have to some extent at any rate counted the cost, and the financial factor is the governing one. If New Zealand is the poorer for their loss there is some satisfaction in the advertisement they are giving the Dominion overseas.