BRITISH SPORT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19945, 1 November 1934, Page 10

BRITISH SPORT

“ STILL SNOB-RIDDEN ” A JOURNALIST'S PROTEST We are having a season of unparalleled success in sport. In golf, lawn, tennis, and athletics triumphs have followed one another in a glittering procession of achievement, writes J. H. Freeman, sporting editor of the “Daily Mail.” in that journal. It is neither a pleasant nor a grateful task to disturb the serenity of this atmosphere of well-being, to draw attention to the clouds, some of them already bigger than a man’s hand, that may so soon obscure the sDorting sky with the grey pall of mediocrity and failure. The chief threats to our future in sport lie in our national attitude of self-complacency; in a refusal to tackle a problem until it has assumed dangerous dimensions; in a deliberately adopted shield of pseudo-modesty that is the more suoremely irritating because it is so smug. I must return to another and equally important menace to our future success—to a snobbishness that is being increasingly manifest on our tennis courts and football fields, and that is rearing its head once more in our cricket pavilion, where we fancied it had been striken a mortal blow. It would not be a good thing for our sport, and would be most definitely a bad thing for our self-esteem, if we were able to see the flag of victory floating in the breeze for unnumbered years. In The Way But. in my view, there is nothing but a combination of regrettable shortsightedness. false diffidence, and hateful snobbery standing in the way of our training, equipping, and maintaining national teams in most fields of sport that would be a credit to Britain in every sense of the term. But we start, all wrong, with the idea that the games masters and the coaches in our public schools, who are able to instil in our boys the joy of life, are socially inferior to the men who teach them the languages of people that are dead. And we pay them accordingly so as to complete the vicious circle.

The boys grow up with the idea that academic distinction which leads to well-paid posts in schools and universities. in Parliament, and in industry, will meet with parental and national approval, and that super-excellence with a cricket bat or tennis racket which means a paid engagement with a county or social club, is a step down the scale towards social degradation.

The spirit behind the incident at Wimbledon the other week which led to a leading amateur lawn tennis player remarking to 'William T. Tilden, “I must not be seen talking with you.” is to me appalling. The player concerned was but interpreting the views that had been conveyed to him. by inference if not directly. It is lamentable that for a lor.g period the governing oody of < ne spo* t should have denied an adcn: k techy reserved international cap lo an amateur player because ms brother was a i-io-fessional under another code. The Two Gates It makes me wish to stand up and cry “Shame!” every time 1 see two men come oat of a gate from one cricket pavilion and nine others emerge from another. It is such things as these that are preventing us from choosing and keeping together, and assisting by every means in our power, the best possible representatives that should do duty for Great Britain in international fields of sport. What is holding back the M.C.C. from choosing an England team next April, putting them in the care of a manager, and pitting them in turn against the counties, so that when they face South Africa in the Tests they shall be a coherent whole? Lack of imagination partly; and partly the national characteristic of antipathy to organising except for the immediate future; above everything else a pathetic snobbishness that refuses to deal a hammer blow’ at the falsely erected barriers between paid and unpaid players. Why it should be more logical to manage and treat as a whole a team that plays Australia in Australia and leave in scattered units a side that faces Australia in England, is beyond me. Must Organise I shall be told that the coountv clubs would oppose the idea. Once they had grasped its potentialities, playing and financial. I believe they would welcome it. And (to put the matter on a purely selfish basis) how many county clubs could survive without the money from international cricket? It is certain, too. that the needs and the strength of the clubs in the Football League would be antagonistic to the formation of a national team owned, controlled, and maintained by the national body, the Football Association.

I see no supreme difficulty in the recruitment of such a team from the clubs, with the payment of compensation by the national authority on a basis similar to the present transfer system.

That team could function throughout the season, playing in representative matches at home and on the Continent —especially on the Continent, where our football prestige is getting lower and lower because of the haphazard and casual method of selection, subject to the whims of clubs after the long English playing season is over. A careful analysis of the reasons of Britain’s present supremacy in sport leaves the very definite impression that exceptional material, and not farseeing government, has been the prime factor. If we anticipate that four years hence a Cotton, a Perry, an Austin, a Dorothy Round, and (perhaps) a winning Test team will be produced again in one season, w’e shall be disappointed.

We shall have to tackle our sport in a broadly tolerant spirit, and yet with a thorough attention to detail. We must let our men and women know that the sports field has no inner ring for a favoured few; we must organise down to the last button and the last shoe-lace.