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Your support makes all the difference.IT SEEMS that scarcely anybody today clings to the notion that there should be a great deal more to sport than the unblushing pursuit of profit.
Today it is surprising to come upon a major story about the games people play, and grow famous by doing so, that is not rancid with impressions of envy and greed.
Now it is an unusual occurrence when leading performers in their field reveal an uncomplicated appreciation of the good things that have happened to them, and a capacity for honest, unquestioning gratitude.
These are not the wails of an embittered veteran refusing to accept the inevitability of change. They are unassailable facts of such debilitating proportion that it is easy to imagine what a rotten face sport may present to the the brave world of tomorrow.
The other day I mentioned this to a man who has my affection and respect, a great sporting hero of another time, an incurable romantic who continually runs the risk of provoking raucous laughter with an imperishable philosophy that amounts to playing hard but fair, giving your all and losing with a smile.
I will leave you to guess at his identity because what he had to say forms the basis of an important lecture that will shortly be delivered to a student body. It is this: that far from inheriting the values of his youth, sport to a large extent has plunged into an era of avarice, envy and mediocrity.
This may not be entirely true but who can confidently argue that things are better than they were or that the future will hold the prospect of dramatic ethical improvement?
Nobody connected with the Premier League, with their pathetic attempts to arrive at a concerted policy, could; neither could anyone in Grand Prix motor racing, a sport continually discredited by internecine strife and the whingeing of drivers who are rewarded in multiples of seven figures.
Nor could the moguls of the European golf tour, unable to implement fully a rule that prohibits the payment of appearence money and ensure the presence of leading players; and no one from tennis, now at the mercy of the players and their agents.
Money has got to be the reason, a principal reason anyway, why those who abuse the rules and spirit of sport are not brought to heel. They earn fortunes. The fans pay to subsidise those fortunes and they have come to accept extravagant posturing as part of the show, while television, now an all pervading influence, feeds them with ludicrous delusions of quality.
For the benefit of readers who may have been living in caves lately without television it should be stated that British sport is finding it easier to fool all the people some of the time.
For example, to assume that last week's contest between Chris Eubank and Tony Thornton for the World Boxing Organisation Super-middleweight Championship was a worthy affair, fully deserving the great attention it received on television and in popular newspapers, would be an affront to history.
'There was a time when a Glasgow fight crowd would have walked out after three rounds,' an old Scottish boxer said. Eubank, no more than capable, but with a cult following drummed up by eccentric posing, probably earned well in excess of pounds 100,000 and insists that he fights only for the money.
On the evidence of a drop in attendances at Premier League matches, which cannot alone be explained by the modernisation of grounds, maybe football supporters have at last come to recognise that they are being served an inferior, overpriced product.
Most everybody is familiar with what now passes for sport. Headlines that speak of transfer fees out of all proportion to ability, increased prize money and sponsorship deals.
Is it any wonder that performers of today are quickly corrupted? 'We develop the competitive edge. We feed 'em money,' a prominent Premier League manager said the other day. 'It's asking for trouble and now we are getting it.'
Briefed on these simple facts what can we expect from the future and those who will come along to fill it?
Memory recreates an age, of innocence perhaps, when people were proud of their heroes and teams, and resented any implication that they would compromise standards. It is possible that we are now moving closer to a time when sport will be resented for what it takes and the performers for what they are being paid.
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