Now! Then! With the Northern Rugby Football Union only six weeks old, a perhaps upper-class Londoner laments that payments for “broken time” will lead to professionalism

Excerpt

The sanguine spirits who believed that it was possible to compensate working-men players of rugby football for loss of wages incurred through assisting a club and yet to avoid actual professionalism, or the payment of services, irrespective of any wage-earning considerations, are likely to be speedily disabused of their notions. The revolt from the Rugby Union is not yet two months’ old, and it might well have been imagined that all concerned in the Northern Union, whether as promoters or as players, would have endeavoured, as far as possible, to contribute to its success, yet already there is trouble between one club and its men.

Presumably the club offers the regulation six shillings, but the players stand out for nine shillings and twelve shillings apiece. In this first outbreak the club officials appear to have acted wisely, refusing the demand, and replacing the malcontents by other players ; but that such an occurrence should have taken place within a month or so of the formation of the Northern Union is ample justification for those who have always contended that payment for “broken time” must inevitably end in professionalism.

No doubt the Northern Union authorities will deal sternly with an outbreak of this kind, and the strikers, already under the ban of the Rugby Union, as members of Northern Union clubs, may find themselves outcasts from the football world. On the other hand, the players of other Northern Union clubs may make common cause with these earliest malcontents, and attempt to force a better price for their services.

Further developments will be awaited with cynical interest, but one cannot help feeling what a pitiful thing it is that the great towns of the North cannot find as representatives players imbued with any more sportsmanlike feeling than these men who would sacrifice their club for a matter of three shillings more or less remuneration.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Original

The sanguine spirits who believed that it was possible to compensate working-men players of rugby football for loss of wages incurred through assisting a club and yet to avoid actual professionalism, or the payment of services, irrespective of any wage-earning considerations, are likely to be speedily disabused of their notions. The revolt from the Rugby Union is not yet two months’ old, and it might well have been imagined that all concerned in the Northern Union, whether as promoters or as players, would have endeavoured, as far as possible, to contribute to its success, yet already there is trouble between one club and its men.

Presumably the club offers the regulation six shillings, but the players stand out for nine shillings and twelve shillings apiece. In this first outbreak the club officials appear to have acted wisely, refusing the demand, and replacing the malcontents by other players ; but that such an occurrence should have taken place within a month or so of the formation of the Northern Union is ample justification for those who have always contended that payment for “broken time” must inevitably end in professionalism.

No doubt the Northern Union authorities will deal sternly with an outbreak of this kind, and the strikers, already under the ban of the Rugby Union, as members of Northern Union clubs, may find themselves outcasts from the football world. On the other hand, the players of other Northern Union clubs may make common cause with these earliest malcontents, and attempt to force a better price for their services.

Further developments will be awaited with cynical interest, but one cannot help feeling what a pitiful thing it is that the great towns of the North cannot find as representatives players imbued with any more sportsmanlike feeling than these men who would sacrifice their club for a matter of three shillings more or less remuneration.

319 words.