AMATEUR STATUS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 31, 6 February 1935, Page 16

AMATEUR STATUS

CASH CLUB MEETINGS

ATTITUDE OF N.Z.A.A.A.

It was made clear by the president (Mr. R. W. McVilly) at the meeting of the council of the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association last night that members of amateur clubs who "coquette with cash clubs," as he put it, will be off-side so far as the N.Z.A.A.A. is concerned.

Mr. McVilly said that, judging from newspaper reports, the action that had been taken in regard to a member of one amateur club had been criticised by the cash club formed recently in Wellington, but his view was that that action was fully justified and that the council would be lacking in its duty to athletes generally if it did not make its attitude perfectly clear. So far as he was concerned, any member of an amateur club who attended or took part in any meeting conducted by the cash club would be disqualified. It was a case of athletes being either bona-fide amateurs or not. If they were bona-fide amateurs they must confine their activities to the operations of the amateur clubs working under the N.Z.A.A.A. On the other hand, if they wanted to ally themselves with the other "side_ there was a right and a proper course for. them to avdopt, and that was to resign their connection- with the N.Z.A.A.A. and join up with the other organisation. No one could take any exception to that. What the N.Z.A.A.A. had a perfect right to take exception to was members of an amateur club going surreptitiously to attend meetings of the cash club, coquetting with the other side, and pretending they were amateurs. There was no half-way house; it was either one thing or the other.

"I am just taking this opportunity of enunciating the position so that clubs connected with the N.Z.A.A.A. will know what view this council will take if members in any way associate with the cash people either in the formation of cash clubs or in the running of sports meetings," concluded Mr. McVilly. "That is my view, and I take it that it coincides with the views of members of the council."

Mr. W. F. Ingram said that' the meeting as a result of which the cash club had been formed was a public meeting called to discuss the prospects of forming such a club. He questioned whether the council had power to disqualify a person who attended such a meeting up to the time a resolution was adopted deciding to form a club. It might so happen that amateurs in a country district hearing of a proposal to form a cash club might attend a meeting for the express purpose of dissuading others present from turning professional. .

Once it had been decided to form a cash club, said Mr. McVilly; it was the duty of bona-fide : amateurs to dissociate themselves from the proceedings at the meeting anc. from the club; '