RINGSIDE GOSSIP

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 228, 28 September 1935, Page 4

RINGSIDE GOSSIP

CONTROL OF BOXING ASSOCIATIONS URGE REDUCTION OF PERMIT FEES. THE COUNCIL AND AMATEURS: One of the most contentious matters that will be discused at the annual conference of delegates to the New Zealand Boxing Council at Dunedin next month will be the matter of permit fees. Three associations, Manawatu, Hawke’s Bay and Ashburton, have for warded remits on the subject, and though the actual wording may differ, their purport is identical —that of reducing the fee charged for amateur contests. In actual fact, the permit fee is really an affiliation levy and up till last February all affiliated associations were charged £2 for all tournaments at which professional boxers took part, £1 for all amateur tournaments, together with 5 per cent, charge on the purse of professional contests and 2 per cent, of the gross takings. These charges constituted the council’s main source of revenue and all combined to become a substitute for an affiliation fee. .Early this year a special meeting decided to increase the permit fee for amateur tournaments to £2 on account of the loss suffered through the interchange of visits between Australia and New Zealand. What the three remits mentioned seek to do is virtually to rescind the decision of the special meeting, though Ashburton and Hawke’s Bay go a little further than Manawatu. The South Island proposal is to make a straight-out charge of 5 per cent, on the gross takings of all tournaments, whether professional and/or amateur, with a minimum of £l. Hawke’s Bay seek to have the fee for an amateur tourney reduced to tho nominal figure of 10s. Manawatu is out for a return of the old order of £2 and £l. Council Should Do More. The obvious inference from these remits is that the associations concerned are of the opinion that the council is not doing all that it should to, let us say, earn its money. It is significant that no complaint, is made regarding the fee charge for professional bouts. It is only the amateur tournaments over which the complaints are lodged. The contention is that the council does nothing to directly foster the amateurs, they being entirely the responsibility of tho affiliated associations, hence why pay £2 to the council for doing nothing? The council certainly arranges international tours, but while such visits may be of an educational value, their scope is so limited that only a very select number of associations derive any benefit. Yet year after year associations go to the expense of sending representatives to the New Zealand championships, the council contributing sometimes, but very rarely to any appreciable extent, towards the cost of sending those representatives. Incidentally the actual championships are conducted on such a basis that the Boxing Council has everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Affiliated Associations’ Work. It is the affiliated associations who really foster amateur boxing by staging amateur tournaments, subsidising boxing schools, encouraging the primary and secondary schoolboys to take up the sport, and generally fostering a lovo of the sport in their respective districts. In this work the council does not concern itself, and for the most part the associations derive comparatively little revenue from each tournament, the usual procedure being to make the trophies of as generous a a alue as is compatible with a policy of “making tho fixture pay its way.” Aery often the council’s permit charge is about all the profit there is, especially now that the fee is £2. The position, briefly stated, is that there is a distinct feeling that the '■aJiic of the council's services are not worth what is being paid to that body. Council’s Opportunity. Naturally there will bo objection to this, mainly on the score of curtailment of the council’s revenue, and it is interesting to note that in this respect tho Hawke's Bay Association puts forward the suggestion that the council undertake the importation of profesisonal boxers with the idea of allowing the affiliated associations to match the importations, either with local boxers or two importations. U would seem that the association has in mind something along the lines uow in vogue in wrestling. The idea, apparently, is that the council will arrange for the boxers to come to New Zealand and then let tho associations stage the bouts, the whole business being conducted on a percentage system. ffhero is much about such a proposal that appeals, for the onus of giving the public what it is prepared to pay foils thrown upon the boxers themselves, who. should they prove good drawcards, will make a handsome earning while the association, though not mak ing perhaps as much money as it might have made in the past, would at least not have to bear tho responsibility of shouldering the full loss a loss that is invariably occasioned by the purse attached to the bout being too high. The Boxing Council and the associations wouhl be assured of some revenue, while the former wotfftl also make | a nominal charge of au affiliation fee.- C.H.B. The Broth of a Boy. The broth of a boy from Lork. Jack Doyle, is in a quandary. He has been suspended in practically every State in America with the exception of New York and. finding his activities severe ly restricted, ho is reported to be seriously considering tho advisability of returning to Britain. ’The latest Air Mail from the Continent has brought a copy of the Irish Tress which reprints recent American criticism on Doyle’s contests . . . and Ireland’s singing boxer is not let off lightly. Perhaps a change of environment would be to his advantage.