PAID SPORT

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 721, 22 December 1933, Page 7

PAID SPORT

J.H.F.)

HOW FOOTBALLERS ARE, BOUGHT AND SOLD AT HOME. STRONG ORITICISM.

(By

London, November 4. J In the Daily Mail not long ago ap- | peared a statement that two players j of Derby County F.C., who had been i obtained by ;tbe club some seasons ' back on payment of £500, were now worth £15,000 to the club. 'If any other club or clubs in Eng- j land could persuade Denby County j to part with these two men and Derby | received £15,000 as compensation for 1 the loss of their services, to what j iamount would the players be en- 1 titled ? J' The answer is £130 for each year of service up to a maximum of £650 ■ for five years, but in no case more than £650. ; The football world has become ac- j customed to the payment of- fees ' ranging from £1000 to £5000 for the ' purchase of players' regdstrations. Clubs have been caught in a maelstrom of their own making. They are being whirled hither and thither seeking frantically for some | seeure foothold, gaining occasionally a little breathing space, only to be dragged once again into the terrafic j struggle against suhmersion and oh- 1 livion. i

When, only a few years ago, a fee of £1000 was paid by one club to another in order that a player should 1 change his locality, there was much 1 coming and going behind the scenes j in Football League circles to put an end to "this bartering in fantastic fig:- 1 ures." Moneybags Jingle. Schemes were propounded that from the start were ohviously impracitcable. One or two were adopt- j ■ed that were soon to be cynically j hlown sky-high with greater ease j than, according to common repute, j it is possible to drive a coach and horses tthrough an Act of Parliament. And with the f,ailur,e of every attempt to put an end to the power of gold in a national sport, th'e jingling of the moneybags became louder and louder. To me the mad scramhle for power with the aid of a big purse has been one of the most degrading spectacles associated with a game that numbers its players by the thousand and its devotees by the million. 1 am aware of all the arguments that have been advanced through the ] years by those whO' hav& fought against it and succumhed, and hy those who would fight against it now if they could see any hope of success. I admit their honesty and sincerity if I do not admire their logic or th'eir determination. They hav& become the victims of a system that has swallowed them up and whose appetite remains insatiable. Let one thing he made clear. The Football Association is to football what the M.C.C. is to cricket; except that it exercises a wider measure of control . The Football League. But just as the M^.C.C. leaves to county executives all matters relating to finance, the payment of players, iand the promotion and running of a championship tournament, so does the Football Association leave ■to the clubs? within certaan prescribed limits, the amount of wages paid to players, the constitution and conditions of the league champiohship and other matters regarded ias of purely dom:estdc concern. • The big professional clubs have banded themselves into a body called the Football League. The league is the clubs, and, in theory at any rate, it fegislates along; the lines which the clubs desire. INow we have this curious position: Th'e Football League1, with the very laudable desire to assist the poorer pf its memfeers, fixed a maximum rate

». i There is, in laddition, talent money of £2 per man for each win, and £1 a man for each drawn game in the league competition, with' benefit money accruing at the maximum rate of £130 a season until five years' service has been .completed or a player leaves' one club for another. But these maxima can b.e paid only by the wealthy clubs, and mean in effect that the better-class players inevitably drift to the clubs with the , best bank balanc'es. [ The second illustration of the league's illogical course is that no limit is placed on the amount one club can offer another as an inducement to part with a player. One fails to see how this benefits the poorer clubs, which cannot afford the fees demanded for the highly skilled player, and cannot, in face of the fempting offers that ffood their letter boxes, afford to keep him if they should find him locally. But the league pursues its logic ruthlessly in one direction. Having fixed a maximum wage, it says to the player: "However much you may be worth to your club and it is offered £10,000 for you, you are not entitled to receive a penny more than if the fee paid were £2500, or leven £1000." 'Indisputably there would be abuses if -the players were given unlimited •bargaining powers, but the commercial immorality of the present state of affairs is apparent. "Slavery." It has made many thmking men of my acquaintance speak with contempt of the game and its rulers. They do not hesitate to speak of "the slavery of the transfer system," a relativ.e term, of course, as applied to a game in which all participation is voluntary. There are other aspects of this transfer business which are blacker still. The power of the clubs to "break" a player hy putting him on the open-to-transfer list at an lexorhitant figure should be ended. 'The player can, by dint of hard work and frequent appeals to the league, reduce the amount to- a sum which' is acceptable to another club. But in the meantime he has been without wages, and he cannot hope to 1 regain the money lost. Then there is a further opportunity to a club to evade its obligations by ' giving a player notice to terminate his contract at the end of a season, keeping him off the wages list during the summer, and re-engaging him when the new season opens. The Football League, when it admitted to membership the 44 clubs which constitute the Northiern and Southern Sections of Division III, declined to grant them the right to vote at the annual meeting on vital matters of policy and finance. The charge of actively participating in a grave injustice to hundreds of football players and many of the struggling clubs in the league competition therefore lies at the door of the 44 clubs in the First and Second Divsions of the tournament. 'I would suggest to the. members of the Football League Management Committee who prate about "the welf.axe of the poorer clubs" and "giving the public the best falent money can buy," that there has been no deterioration in the Rugby Union game although not a single player receives a penny-piece for his services to his eountry or his club. Yet everyfhere my colleagues and I on the. sports staff of The Daily Mail go we are confronted with evidence that cannot be gainsaid of a [ continuous decline in the standard of play in Association football. I would dearly love to see the day when every professional foothaller is employed in some trade or profession during the week and is paid a fixed sum for playing football on Saturday afternoon. Abuses of a bona-fide employment clause would be more easily traceahle — iand would be less unmoral — than many of the subterfuges that are used now to entice players from their clubs or the powers I have indicated that clubs wiield over players. Wfhen that day comes, as it will eome, and the financial scales have dropped from the eyes of our football legislators, they will be able to ■see among other things that the proper time; for beginning the football season is not earlier than mid-Sep-tember. The calling up of players for training in the blazing month of August is one of the radnor illustrations of the way that the success of the game is viewed solely through the pay-box window.