Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- A guide to prices, 1870–1914
- Part I An overview
- Part II The development of professional gate-money sport
- Part III Sport in the market place: the economics of professional sport
- Part IV Playing for pay: professional sport as an occupation
- Part V Unsporting behaviour
- Part VI A second overview
- Appendices
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- A guide to prices, 1870–1914
- Part I An overview
- Part II The development of professional gate-money sport
- Part III Sport in the market place: the economics of professional sport
- Part IV Playing for pay: professional sport as an occupation
- Part V Unsporting behaviour
- Part VI A second overview
- Appendices
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This book emerges out of a traumatic personal experience some two and a half decades ago when I was called before the selectors and informed that I would no longer be considered for the university rugby team, which, of course, played the union version of the game. What was my heinous crime? I had not questioned the parentage of the referee, nor had I committed gross indecency in the depth of the scrum. All I had done was play a few games of rugby league, but this was enough to have me deemed a professional and hence ineligible to participate in union matches. To me this seemed harsh justice as I was never good enough to get paid, officially or otherwise: all that I ever found in my boots were sweaty socks. What, I wondered, was so special about professional sportsmen that simply to play alongside them, even second-rate ones, was sufficient to contaminate my amateurism? My interest in the professional was further roused a few years later when I realised that the enigmatic, spectacled batsman who ran me out in a school cricket match was making a living doing the same thing attest level!
The actual stimulus to write this book arose more recently, after I had emigrated to Australia, where I became more aware of some of the special features of a career in modern professional sport. First, there are the restrictions placed by political and sports authorities on the mobility and earning capacity of professional sportsmen.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Pay Up and Play the GameProfessional Sport in Britain, 1875–1914, pp. xiii - xvPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988