Welsh Journals

demned whatever success may attend their administrative efficiency. It is to no pur- pose to contend that scandals are short-lived, that clean and ruthless standards are de- manded or that professionalism can only exist upon a wide-spread basis of amateur- ism. There is, ultimately speaking, a debase- ment of the coinage of sport when pounds whether in thousands or in units have to be considered first the game and its intrinsic value last. On this view Rugby Football, the Welsh Union, the players of the game and the temper of the spectators are on a plane immeasurably higher than can be acheived by any Association, which is based upon a dividend earning basis. Can this contention be proved ? It cannot, but there is evidence which steers in this direction. Shall we take as our instance a large club-Newport? The Rugby fifteens are merely some of the athletic activities which find their place in this model centre. Cricket and tennis gain support in cash derived from the proceeds of football the cricket, tennis and football teams react alike to the mutual pride and interest shown in each other's doings. The scheme has implications which the future may see realised a social athletic Newport, based upon a large local pride, focussed round a club that possesses Rugby traditions second to none in the world. There is no need to dismiss this position as being outside the area of things present and practical. It is so near to the heart of the sane and final view of all social phenomena, that in a country intellectually rounded it would be taken as a common- place. In Wales to-day it carries several very sensible conclusions. First, that Wales possesses in Rugby Football a game -and be it said now that a game or games are necessary in a Christian democracy possessed of leisure, arising out of one of the root constituents of human life, viz. rivalry or a desire for excellence-which is immeasurably more valuable than the popular code of the other countries. Readers may here enter a tentative"why." Because an emancipated community values things for other than commercial reasons. County cricket-professionalism is there, one admits, but only on sufferance, and because historically the complexity of the game does not permit of amateur- coaching, with its attendant sacrifice of time-is mainly held together against superior spectacular attraction by love of a game as a game, by the aristocratic repugnance of men for the tawdry and gallery-playing devices of money-based sport. University athleticism is pure and devoid of even the faintest suspicion of commercial origin. Amateur golf is the main-stay of the game, and its profession- alism again the historical accident of its complexity. Welsh Rugby Football stands nearer to the millennium of sport than any of these great games. It has established an unassail- able tradition upon the basis of the game as a game, apart from its spectacular draw it has made a democracy not only familiar with an amateur sport of distinguished rank but is in reality a discovery of democracy, which acts as participant and patron. On the other hand, Rugby in Scotland is aristo- cratic in the sense that artisan players can be found in few clubs other than the Border fifteens, and an artisan following is the exception. English Rugby is pre- cisely similar except in those outposts of the game which have developed under the direct stimulus and encouragement of the Welsh game-Leicester, Gloucester and Devonshire to wit. This then is the centre of the position. A game democratic and amateur is a rare