Page:Football, the Rugby game.djvu/55

Rh there being but few who can sacrifice their life to sport, which is a pastime without increment, the pastime without an income becomes a profession with one. The sole raison d'être of a professional in athletic sport is, I conceive, the excellence which by his agency is attained, and which without his agency would never have been approached. If you eliminate this factor from the calculation, it would be hard indeed to show what other benefit his introduction has worked, while it cannot be denied that he has often and often been the means of importing a corrupt element, which has degraded and impaired the sport of his adoption.

The corollary, which these remarks lead to, furnishes this indisputable axiom, viz. that cæteris paribus the man who gives up his whole time and energies to athletics, and makes them his profession, is bound to become the superior of the amateur who follows them as a recreation for his leisure moments.

To see the truth of this practically demonstrated, you have only to turn to our various fields of athletics. What do you find? Why, that except in cricket, amateurs stand no earthly chance with professionals.

The reason that the best amateurs can hold their own with professionals in cricket is that they play just as much cricket as professionals do. I wish to call most especial attention to the fact that out of the whole category of athletics, this is the one game to which amateurs and professionals devote the same amount of time, and it is the one game in which they are able to compete on terms of equality.

I especially emphasize this, because I find that cricket is the game which the advocates of professionalism in football invariably cite, in order to show how well the conjoined system of the two classes works. They do not pause to consider why this is so, nor do they seem to realize that if the