Deconstructing the Gentleman Amateur

From rather unassuming origins in the late eighteenth century, the ‘gentleman amateur’ came to dominate the British Empire in both discourse and practice. In academic terms the concept is best understood as a literary trope but their influence traversed a wide range of real world activities and interests.[i]It was, however, through sport that such men were most prominent and ‘seen’ to embody an ideal of British masculinity. However, the ‘respectable’ sporting culture of the late-Victorian bourgeois gentleman amateur was entirely different to the more ‘hedonistic’ culture of the aristocratic gentlemen of the previous century. 

Despite a vast literature referring to ‘gentlemanly amateurism’ in sport, historians have all but ignored this transition and two distinct interpretations of this ‘upper class’ sporting culture have developed: Whereas James Mangan suggests public school ‘athleticism’ was the moral and educational expression of Victorian ‘manliness’ and ‘muscular Christianity’, John Hargreaves argues that the hegemonic culture of ‘amateurism’ was used to justify social segregation in sport.[ii]Mangan’s ideas, following the widespread academic rejection of Marxism in the 1990s, appear to have won out but the evidence sides with Hargreaves. Nonetheless, neither author fully examined the philosophical origins of ‘gentlemanly amateurism’. Indeed, historians have treated this social and cultural construct as if it arrived fully formed. 

Only one author has attempted such a task, but Lincoln Allison’s claim that historians and sociologists ‘mistakenly’ portrayed amateurism as an ideological, rather than a philosophical, approach to sport are deeply flawed.[iii]Nevertheless, understanding the philosophical origins of both the gentleman and the amateur helps researchers to better appreciate the meaning and utility of such terms and how these changed in relation to broader issues in contemporary society. Additionally, in a move away from economic determinism, such an analysis highlights the way in which the new social and sporting elites utilised structural (public schools, universities, sports administration and rules), cultural (the media and literature), and linguistic (Latin, Classical philosophy and aesthetics) power within and outside of sport. 

Defining the ‘gentleman amateur’ 

Although it would remain an ill-defined concept it was broadly agreed that any genteel young man, with reasonable energy and good character, provided with a public school education, qualified as a ‘gentleman amateur’. Or, as one commentator put it: ‘the old theory of an amateur was that he was a gentleman and the two were simply convertible terms’. 

Outside of politics, the vast majority of gentlemen amateurs were anonymous ‘hobbyists’ operating away from the public eye and such men were, at their best, simple enthusiasts who pursued an interest for its own sake. Very occasionally, their ‘dabbling’ produced significant scientific breakthroughs: Charles Darwin and Henry Fox Talbot for instance. And yet the attitudes and activities of many often hindered progress or infringed upon the livelihoods and freedoms of lower-class professionals. 

Nowhere was this intrusion more pronounced than in sport and, as the social and economic context in which sport operated changed, who or what constituted a gentleman amateur was vigorously contested.[iv]Athletics and rowing fretted over the presence of labourers, tradesmen and coaches during the 1880s; the sport of rugby split into what became amateur and professional codes in 1895; and the ‘gentlemen’ running English cricket enforced degrading distinctions upon poorly paid professionals until 1963.[v]And yet, their predecessors would have deemed these debates unnecessary …

Aristocratic origins  

The earliest reference to a gentleman amateur in sport emanates from 1788, and it happens to refer to a boxer called Mendoza who had fraudulently borrowed money from an unnamed ‘gentleman amateur of the science’.[vi]Early media interest was usually linked to money, social status and scandal but the athletic exploits of ‘gentleman amateurs’, such as a man called Tolly who, in 1827, completed six laps of a graveyard in less than twenty minutes for 100 sovereigns, were increasingly deemed noteworthy.[vii]

‘Blood’, or what became known as ‘good breeding’, had long been central to a gentleman’s nobility but this had changed by the early-eighteenth century. Although gentlemen of the period had inherited a carefully cultivated concept of chivalrous behaviour, notions of ‘birthright’ and the old conception of noblesse oblige – the idea that those with wealth, power and status accept the social responsibilities that come with them – had been diluted by the growth of a new trading middle class. Indeed, Daniel Defoe claimed as early as 1725 that ‘trade is so far from being inconsistent with a gentleman, that, in short, trade in England makes a gentleman’.[viii]

By the time the grandsons of Defoe’s contemporaries were born, the behaviour expected of gentlemen had altered further as notions of civic humanism gained influence. As this concept liberated ‘gentlemen’ to act more like citizens, it was benevolence, rather than obligation, which came to inform gentlemanly behaviour.[ix]

Gentlemen now had more freedom to act as they pleased and many sporting gentlemen took full advantage of this more relaxed atmosphere. Accordingly, they ‘loved’, or contributed towards, the very aspects of sport that their successors would attempt to eradicate. Namely: gambling, a readiness to take on all-comers in often violent competition as well as sharing strongly felt communal identities and exploiting the commercial forces that helped to popularise cricket and other team sports. 

In such an environment, the term ‘gentleman’ often referred to ‘anyone worth flattering for profit’. But serious sporting aristocrats, such as the Earl of Tankerville, would have felt little shame in being known for ‘nothing but cricket-playing, bruising and keeping low company’.[x]

The role that noblesse oblige played in enabling patrician and plebian to play together may be contested but it is clear that any on-field setback at the hands of a lower class competitor could be easily discounted. Sporting gentlemen – even during the early decades of the nineteenth century – enjoyed an unassailable social position that The Field, in 1913, summarized thus:

One great distinction, far sharper than it is today, cut across all sport, and, indeed every department of activity, the distinction, namely, between those who were gentlemen and those who were not. Nothing could alter or qualify this distinction of birth. If a gentleman ‘turned professional,’ as we say, he remained a gentleman. … In fact, when a gentleman and not-gentleman met in athletic rivalry … the feeling that it was ‘man to man’ yielded to the knowledge that it was man against gentleman.[xi]

This particular incarnation of the sporting gentleman would gradually disappear during the middle decades of the nineteenth century as the repercussions of a maturing industrialised society began to take effect. But although their heirs to the title had profited directly from the opportunities presented by industrial capitalism and unprecedented peaks in urbanisation, this new generation of ‘gentlemen’ – who emerged in ever larger numbers from the public schools after 1860 – were less inclined to compete with the working classes on equal terms. 

The public schools

Originally, the public schools had been established for the charitable education of poor disadvantaged boys, but the social and economic background of scholars, despite the most basic living standards, changed significantly as more aristocratic boys were sent to schools such as Eton, Westminster and Harrow.[xii]The gradual displacement of the poorer scholars led to vast differences in status between the pupils and those supposedly in charge, and the resulting power vacuum manifested itself in a number of open rebellions, including one organised by Byron at Harrow in 1805.[xiii]As much as the distance from families and an extremely harsh environment were deemed an important part of the ‘character building’ process, the levels of ill discipline and violence were such that many within and outside of the system deemed reform necessary.[xiv]

Although attempts to control the pupils had been made at other schools, it was the changes established by Thomas Arnold at Rugby between 1828 and 1842, which were to be most successful. 

Arnold sought to regain control of his school by instilling a code of Christian conduct and good ‘character’ in the future leaders of nation and Empire but, significantly for an apparent educationalist, intellectualism was a low priority. As Arnold put it himself: ‘what we must look for here is, first, religious and moral principle; secondly, gentlemanly conduct; thirdly, intellectual ability’.[xv]

Despite his personal dislike of games his aims were most easily communicated via participation in sport but his reform of the prefect-fagging system only served to set in place the conditions necessary for the development of the public school cult of ‘athleticism’.[xvi]

The privileging of athleticism over academic achievement may have led to Rudyard Kipling’s satirical image of the ‘flannelled fool’ and the ‘muddied oaf’ but the Clarendon Commission of 1864 was at pains to point out that the debt owed by ‘English’ society to the public schools was hard to estimate. The scholar’s ‘capacity to govern others and control themselves, their aptitude for combining freedom with order, their public spirit, their vigour and manliness of character … their love of healthy sports and exercise’ meant the public school system had, the Report concluded, ‘the largest share in moulding the character of the English gentleman’.[xvii]

Nonetheless, Christian values, despite their alleged primacy, had little influence upon ‘gentlemanly’ behaviour inside or outside of these schools. Rather than the Bible it was, instead, the chivalrous ideals portrayed in Sir Walter Scott’s best-selling Waverley novels (1814-1831) such as Ivanhoe (1819) that proved most popular. Arnold may have also been hostile towards ideals that placed personal allegiances before those to God but Scott had created a model for young middle class men that Robert Baden-Powell was still promoting almost a century later.[xviii]

That said, this did not stop ideologists such as the Rev. James Pycroft, author of the influential The Cricket Field (1859), co-opting Christian values to recast sport in their own image. But, as much as being ‘orderly and sensible’ was a significant departure from the hedonistic approach of the previous century, this ‘moral’ sporting culture was, increasingly, something that only those with status, time and money to spare could achieve.[xix] 

Image versus reality

Having competed amongst themselves at the various public schools and ancient universities, a sense of exclusiveness began to pervade the way in which the classes approached leisure and sporting competition. The creation of embryonic town councils had provided the middle classes with their first route to power and this new political class began to introduce a new, alternative, culture of respectable behaviour (and respect for property) entirely different to that of the previous century. 

As much as the new middle classes wished to outlaw or abandon ‘rough’ pre-industrial pastimes, such as folk football or Guy Fawkes celebrations, such was the resistance among indigenous elites that it often took many decades before such customs disappeared. 

In the upper echelons of British sport where national sporting bodies, frequently prefixed by the term ‘amateur’, were controlled by the public school elites things were a little easier to manipulate. But as much as they were able to dictate terms debates relating to the ‘vexed question as to the bone-fide Gentleman Amateur’ were commonplace by the early 1870s. Those that defended the designation thought the complaints of amateur ‘tradesmen and their assistants’ ‘erroneous’. As one correspondent to The Standard bewilderingly proclaimed:

The introduction of the word gentleman appears to be their stumbling block, and pons asinorum, Hamlet says – “To be an honest man, is to be one among 10,000”, had he said “To be a gentleman”, one would feel inclined to add a good many more noughts onto that figure, it would therefore be difficult and out of place here to attempt to describe this rare animal.[xx]

The increasingly widespread use of the prefix ‘gentleman’ was indicative not of their alleged rarity, but the fact that it was essentially possible for anyone to be an amateur. The simplest definition, written by Charles Box in 1877, defined an amateur as: ‘A non-professional player, whether patrician or plebian’ and had such a straightforward definition been adopted British sport and society would undoubtedly look very different today.[xxi]But a utopian definition that encouraged ‘classless’ sport was exceedingly naïve considering an athlete’s ‘gentlemanly’ status had segregated upper-class men from their working-class counterparts since the turn of the century. 

Gentlemen versus Players cricket matches from 1806 aside, the introduction of rowing races exclusively for gentleman amateurs in the 1840s had led to a rise in disputes and ‘surprising’ displays of ungentlemanly temper.[xxii]Professional boatmen, who spent their working lives upon the water, notwithstanding, the presence of a ‘shovel-handle maker’, or other men not qualifying as a ‘gentleman amateur’, was usually only questioned by losing crews and their objections were, initially at least, often dismissed as ‘frivolous’.[xxiii]

Defending the introduction of the Manchester and Salford Regatta Club’s own definition, the Hon. Sec. Edward Chew claimed theirs was ‘the most liberal construction ever put upon the term’, and it was designed to do no more than ‘keep the two classes of rower apart’. Physical prowess formed the basis of these ‘classes’ and Chew argued, not unreasonably, in 1849 that it ‘cannot be supposed that a merchant’s clerk … is physically competent to contest with a machinist or carpenter’.[xxiv]But, regardless of the ‘handicapping’ rationale behind such rules, certain sections of the media were quick to highlight the obvious social connotations involved. 

‘Aquaticus’ was openly critical of the rowing fraternity who ‘thought it beneath the dignity of a gentleman to row in a match against a waterman’, while ‘gentlemen constantly engage in cricket matches with professional players, and are not considered to lower themselves by doing so’.[xxv]Men such as such as Herbert Playford, described as ‘the greatest gentleman amateur that ever lived’, undermined any pretense of amateur purity further by competing in races at Henley that attracted a good deal of gambling and awarded valuable prizes.[xxvi]

Despite defensive claims that such prizes were merely ‘symbolic’, quarrels over prizes and who was, or was not, a gentlemen amateur now replaced arguments over disputed bets in a number of court cases. In a widely reported spat over some fish knives and forks worth £10 in 1873, a ‘collector’ for the carriers Messrs. Chaplin and Horne called Wheeler, who had won an athletics race at Crystal Palace, was denied his prize for failing, retrospectively, to meet the criteria required of a ‘gentleman amateur’.[xxvii]

Elsewhere, an athlete called Peters was disqualified from a race ‘open to all amateurs’ due to his appearance, and strictly enforced regulations at the Amateur Athletic Club’s Bicycle Championship reduced an original field of twenty to just three.[xxviii]Giving evidence to another court case over a disputed prize in 1875 the editor of Athlete, Walter Platt, contentiously stated that ‘it was well enough understood what the term meant; it was a lex non scripta, and could not be found in any code of rules’.^[xxix]  

Cases such as these marked an important point in the transition between the traditional culture of socially open competition for high stakes, and a new culture that encouraged sport for it’s own sake, but only within socially discrete races or within sides where teammates were treated very differently. 

Confusion was understandable in this period of social and cultural flux, but it was clear Defoe’s proclamation of 1725 no longer applied. Like the witness who considered himself entitled, ‘despite earning a weekly wage’, to be called a gentleman amateur, many tradesmen now found their source of income denied them amateur, let alone gentlemanly, status.^[xxx]Although prepared to compete as ‘pure’ amateurs, the Amateur Rowing Association’s refusal to acknowledge a petition from a group of tradesmen led to a split in rowing that foreshadowed the schism in rugby. 

The establishment of a separate ‘Tradesmen’s Association’, the National Amateur Rowing Association, in 1890 not only resulted in the duplication of administrative effort, it signaled how farcical amateur regulations were becoming.[xxxi]Whereas University rowing crews, who had accepted ‘expenses paid’ training in 1898,[xxxii]went unpunished soldiers, representing the Royal Artillery Football Club in Portsmouth, were banned from the English Amateur Cup the following year for a similar ‘offence’.[xxxiii]

British sport was now in danger, if it had not already, of tying itself up in knots over what the Pall Mall Gazette called ‘idiotic distinctions’ that were fast becoming synonymous with incompetence elsewhere.^[xxxiv]

Amateurism in decline 

Despite strong associations with the wealthier classes the omnipresence of amateurs was being ruthlessly satirised by the late 1860s. As one journal bemoaned: ‘So inevitable is the amateur becoming, and so extensive his range of operations, that the time is not distant when the greatest mark of distinction to which a gentlemen can aspire will be to be pointed out as “the man who does nothing”’.[xxxv]

Their reluctance to compete on equal terms with working class opponents not only trivialised any athletic achievement it was also deemed emasculating. Having declared the ‘speedy greengrocer’ the ‘terror of the British athlete’,The Graphic even suggested that ‘many a gentleman amateur might envy, and … look upon with dread’ the prowess of female rowing crews. 

No journalist would have dared to accuse (even obliquely) the likes of Tankerville – who had been up in court for flogging a coachman – of such a crime against British masculinity. It was not, however, professionalism that threatened the pre-eminent position of the gentleman amateur. As The Field explained further in 1913:

In the present stage of evolution games have been both democratized and universalized. As soon as the patronage of the public was assured it was inevitable that some games should be exploited on business principles. This result has had its good influences. There is one interesting effect of public patronage generally, which shows how public games react upon social life; that is, that not the professional only, but the amateur also, have become in a sense ‘the servants of the public’.^[xxxvi]

This unintended, and most unwelcome, consequence was to be avoided at all costs and many of those in control made the conscious decision to make a number of sports less popular. The cups and leagues that had boosted the popularity of football after 1871 were to be resisted in rugby union until the 1980s and, despite the introduction of Test matches and the nationwide popularity of cups and leagues prior to 1914, cricket’s establishment also chose to reject such meritocratic impulses. Whereas leagues continued in the Midlands and the North, the Club Cricket Conference – founded by a veritable ‘who’s who’ of the cricket establishment in 1916 – all but outlawed 'competitive' cricket in the South of England and the ‘feudalistic’ MCC ensured the County Championship remained an idiosyncratic mess into the 1960s. 

Had cricket not been so well established it may have gone the same way as rugby union but, despite calls for an ‘all amateur’ County Championship and a prohibitive rise in entrance fees, the game now relied upon the professionals – almost always the best players – and public support. In order to maintain their privileged position in sport amateurs presented themselves as ‘servants of the game’ and chose to distinguish themselves from working class professionals by playing, winning or, even, losing ‘gracefully’.

This aesthetic approach also originated from the public schools and the extent that the Classics have influenced British sport in terms of ‘technique of practice and training … procedure and management, and even terminology’ should not be underestimated.[xxxvii]

Headmasters’, such as G. E. L. Cotton of Marlborough College, used the pulpit to ‘expound a Christian version of the Graeco-Renaissance concept of the “whole man”’,^[xxxviii]whereas sporting ideologists co-opted the term mens sana in corpore sano in much the same way.^[xxxix]Schools, such as Eton and Harrow, may have become synonymous with sport, but they had also become ‘the enclaves for the upper and the wealthier middle classes for whom the Classics served no other purpose than that of a status symbol’.[xl]

The use of Latin pervaded writing on a number of amateur sports, but it was in cricket that men such as C. B. Fry, himself a Classical scholar, most commonly employed this dead language. Fry, despite earning a good deal from the game and personal endorsements, tellingly described cricket as ‘a cult and a philosophy inexplicable to the profanum vulgus... the merchant minded ... and the unphysically intellectual’, was one of many who would employ classical ideals as an ideological shield.^[xli]

The gentlemen amateurs, their biographers, and sycophantic journalists such as Neville Cardus utilised classical concepts such as areté: the combined excellence of mind, body and soul (the cult of the all-rounder);[xlii]agon: competition for glory and honour (but not financial reward); aesthetics or beauty,[xliii]and Plato’s ideas in relation to the intrinsic, extrinsic and instrumental value of sport.[xliv]

Amateurs played for the right reasons (for the intrinsic ‘love’ of sport), in the right way (the Corinthian ideal of fairness and honour), and in an effortless (aesthetic) style but, most commonly, they chose to misdirect the public away from their own shortcomings by highlighting how the professionals failed to live up to these idealised standards. By portraying the professionals as machine-like specialists who took part in sport for entirely mercenary reasons, the 'amateurs' – even if their gentlemanly and amateur status, sense of ‘fair play’ and sporting competence was in doubt – gained an air of moral and philosophical superiority. 

Unsurprisingly, those advocating the idea of ‘sport for sport’s sake’ wished to elicit a very different outcome to the aesthetics movement of the late nineteenth-century, and its call for ‘art for art’s sake’. Whereas the aesthetics movement, which sought to separate art from the production of religious, moral or political meaning, emerged from outside of the social and political elite the advocates of amateurism such as Lord Burghley (Eton), Lord Harris (Eton), C. B. Fry (Repton) and J. E. K. Studd (Eton) were the establishment. 

British sport was thus saddled with religious, moral, political, social and racial meaning that elevated a very particular class of ‘Englishman’ above all others. Foreigners and colonials, be they white or black, were easy targets as were the working classes at home but there was also a regional dimension employed. In cricket, northern players and spectators alike were libelously accused of (instrumental) aggression and partisanship, an appreciation of unaesthetic ‘big strokes’ and a love of gambling upon matches,[xlv]whereas their ‘brethren of the south’, were thought to have liked their cricket ‘for its own sake, unadulterated by commercial influences’.^[xlvi]

Repercussions and legacies

These regional stereotypes remain influential today because the administration of British sport and its image remained the preserve of private ‘upper class’ clubs (the MCC and the All England Club for instance)and their acolytes late into the twentieth century. There were, however, occasional incidences where this image was subverted. But as much as Alf Tupper, the chip guzzling ‘Tough of the Track’, scored regular victories over the ‘toffs’ of the Amateur Athletics Association in the pages of The Rover, there was no such happy ending for John Tarrant who became a folk hero known as the ‘Ghost Runner’ during the 1950s. 

Despite a good deal of talent, Tarrant was effectively banned for life, at just 20 years old, by the Amateur Athletic Association for winning a modest £17 for a series of boxing bouts as a teenager. Tarrant, still eager to compete, became infamous for gatecrashing races and he regularly outperformed internationally recognised runners. Despite this, he was never allowed to represent his country and he died a bitter man aged just 42.

Indeed, international success was to be fiercely resisted if athletic success meant those emerging from the elite public schools and universities were to become what one headmaster tellingly called ‘professional slaves’. 

Although the importance of winning for national prestige was increasingly recognised, their reluctance to promote talent, no matter where it came from or, even, train in a serious manner led to plenty of international embarrassments. 

An especially poor performance at the Stockholm Olympics in 1912 had led to an enquiry chaired by J. E. K. Studd, whereas the winless summer of 1948 against Don Bradman’s ‘Invincibles’ had also led to much soul searching.^[xlvii]However, nothing – not even repeated defeats at the hands of the colonials – was to interfere with the status quo.

The editor of the Kent County Cricket Club Year Book, in response to the losses to Bradman’s Invincibles, summed up the cricket establishment’s conservatism thus: ‘Even to beat the Australians we are not prepared to sacrifice the spirit and rivalry of our village, club and county grounds. For the spirit is as much cricket to us as the finest strokes in the game’.^[xlviii]What this ‘spirit’ was and who exactly the term ‘us’ referred to remained vague, but the game was not being run in the interests of the general public.

In August 1956, the respected think tank Political and Economic Planning published The Cricket Industry, which noted that ‘there have been, and still are, criticisms of county cricket as a preserve of snobbery and class distinction’, and that the MCC Committee was ‘drawn from a limited group of people’.^[xlix]That same year the University of Birmingham’s Britain in the World of Sport called for greater state involvement and funding. 

Sir John Wolfenden’s report Sport and the Community (1960) was more cautious  and suggested the abolition of the amateur distinction ought to be brought about not by government but ‘the influence of public opinion on the Governing Bodies’.^[l]Given the conservatism, and self-interest, that ran through such organisations, it was unlikely they would ever bow to public opinion alone. Indeed, J. E. K. Studd and his Olympic Committee had reached exactly the same conclusion in 1913.^[li]

The Olympic movement may have belatedly accepted professionalism in 1988 but rugby union, which had ruthlessly banned players for life for simply meeting with rugby league clubs, sacked England’s three-time grand slam winning captain, Will Carling, in 1995 for complaining about the ‘57 old farts’ who made up the RFU’s committee. This happened only months before the sport finally abandoned amateurism but – even after twenty years of unfettered professionalism – the RFU remains happy to peddle the sport’s discredited history for ideological gain. 

Not only is the world cup trophy named after him but the opening ceremony of the 2015 Rugby Union World Cup (disingenuously called the ‘rugby world cup’ as if rugby league does not exist) recreated the William Webb-Ellis creation myth. To compound this historical crime a member of the Royal family, Prince Harry, even played a servant in the dramatisation of this fictional incident.

In a similar vein, the MCC employs ‘The Spirit of Cricket’ and introduced (without irony) the following Preamble as recently as 2000: ‘Cricket is a game that owes much of its unique appeal to the fact that it should be played not only within its Laws but also within the Spirit of the Game. Any action which is seen to abuse this Spirit causes injury to the game itself’.[lii]As sledging, let alone match fixing, demonstrates such an amateurish concept is pointless in a cut-throat professional business. But it’s mere existence – like the England team’s recent decision to come onto the field of play to Sir Edward Elgar’s version of Jerusalem – is evidence that cricket is still influenced by the values and attitudes of a very small group of upper class Victorian gentlemen. 

Despite the hyper-commercialism and professionalism of the modern game, the monoculture cultivated by the Victorians and Edwardians that fuelled the racist 'Tebbit Test' in the 1990s is alive and well. The game’s administration continues to reflect the self-interests of a socially narrow group from the nineteenth century. Giles Clarke (Rugby School) acted as the ECB’s unpaid chairman between 2007 and 2015 and not only do the ECB continue to make decisions – most notably the removal of Test cricket from free to air television – that undermine the popularity of English cricket, the privately educated dominate the field of play. 

Sadly much of the media remain equally complicit and the Test Match Special commentary box has been dominated by public school attitudes and archetypes since its first broadcast in 1957. Alan Gibson and Pearson Surita were heard ‘conjugating a non-existent Latin verb’ during a broadcast in the 1960s and ‘Aggers’ (Uppingham), ‘Tuffers’ (Highgate) and ‘Blowers’ (Eton) were often heard exploiting the forthright opinions of Geoffrey Boycott (the son of a Yorkshire miner) as a source of humour while extolling the virtues of ‘schools’ cricket.

Conclusion

From relatively straightforward origins the concept of the gentleman and the amateur was altered considerably following the expansion and empowerment of the middle classes in the early nineteenth century. Although an influential social, cultural and political force, the social status of these men, unlike their eighteenth century predecessors, was far from secure. This was especially so in sport, where they faced talented working class athletes and the meritocratic structures and repercussions of modern popular sport. 

The middle-classes first attempt to counteract this 'level playing field' was the increasing use of the title of ‘gentleman’. A title with social status in-built, its use enabled middle and upper-class athletes to distinguish themselves from lower class sportsmen but Chivalric notions of ‘gentlemanly’ behaviour, such as moral authority, bravery, loyalty, courtesy had little to do with sport in practice. Indeed, it was the professionals who continually had to make the self-sacrifices (to wider society or a team) frequently claimed by the 'gentlemen'. The use of the term ‘gentleman’ in sport, as in wider society, was simply about social distinction. 

As the prefix of gentleman fell out of use, the concept of amateurism became more important. Although presented as a more ‘civilised’ relationship with sport, the social fears and self-interests of amateur sportsmen and administrators led to the exclusion of lower class athletes, just as eligible to claim amateur status. As their rejection of ‘fair’ or equal competition led to the righteous condemnation of amateurism it, thus, became necessary for sporting elites, and their acolytes in the media, to re-invent the upper-class sportsman in aesthetic terms. 

Irrespective of the numerous contradictions, amateurs’ were said to play sport gracefully and faced victory or defeat with even-handed stoicism and self-control. This linguistic defence of the amateur may have bolstered the moral and philosophical standing of amateur sportsmen but it also excused consistently poor performances and masked the widespread hypocrisy of amateurism. 

Like E. W. Hornung's Raffles (1898-1909), the fictional gentleman thief and amateur batsman, who was constantly getting the better of professional policeman and cricketer alike, the real gentleman amateurs of the late-nineteenth and twentieth century have ensured their social and cultural legacy by enacting a work of fiction upon the public. Such was their success; the gentleman amateur remains a significant presence in British sport (and society) today.[liii]

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[i]Christine Berberich, The Image of the Gentleman in Twentieth-Century Literature (Aldershot, 2007).

[ii]Holt, ‘The Amateur Body’, 352-353.

[iii]John J. Stewart, ‘The Meaning of Amateurism’, Sociology of Sport Journal, Vol. 2 Issue 1 (1985), pp. 77-86; Lincoln Allison, Amateurism in Sport: an analysis and a defence(London, 2001).

[iv]Woodgate, W.B. (1888), cited in Derek Birley, Land of Sport and Glory: Sport and British Society, 1887-1910(Manchester, 1995), p. 57.

[v]Pall Mall Gazette, 8 December 1886.

[vi]Pall Mall Gazette, 11 January 1788.

[vii]The Standard, 29 December 1827.

[viii]Christopher Brookes, English Cricket(London, 1978), pp. 51-52.

[ix]J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment(Princeton, 1975). 

[x]Birley,A Social History,pp. 24 and 39.

[xi]New York Times, 16 March 1913.

[xii]As Bamford notes, the social class of the scholars was paramount in defining what a public school was. T. W Bamford, Rise of the Public Schools: a Study of Boys’ Public Boarding Schools in England and Wales from 1837 to the Present Day(London, 1967), p. 38.

[xiii]William Laurence Burn, The Age of Equipoise: a Study of the mid-Victorian Generation(New York, 1964), p. 67;Rubinstein, Capitalism, Culture, and Decline in Britain (London, 1994), p. 104.

[xiv]Peter Parker, The Old Lie: The Great War And The Public-School Ethos (London, 1987), p. 40.

[xv]See the Rugby School website http://www.rugbyschool.net/welcome/history_traditions.php?o=1accessed 29/11/10.

[xvi]The ‘prefect/fagging’ system placed school discipline in the hands of the older scholars. Prefects were thus entitled to treat the younger boys as they saw fit.

[xvii]Clarendon Commission cited in Parker, The Old Lie, pp. 41-42. The nine were: Eton, Charterhouse, Harrow, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Westminster, Winchester, St Paul's and Merchant Taylors'.

[xviii]Girouard, The Return to Camelot, p. 37.Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship(London, 1908).

[xix]James Pycroft, The Cricket Field: Or, The History and the Science of the Game of Cricket.(Boston, 1859), p. 17.

[xx]The Standard, 25 September 1872.

[xxi]Charles Box, The English game of cricket: comprising a digest of its origin, character, history & progress; together with an exposition of its laws & language(London, 1877), p. 442.

[xxii]Liverpool Mercury, 18 July 1864.

[xxiii]The Era, 27 July 1842; The Manchester Times and Gazette, 25 September 1846.

[xxiv]The Era, 26 August 1849.

[xxv]Bells London Life and Sporting Chronicle, 25 April 1852.

[xxvi]One athlete, J. E. Warburton, who declared himself ‘Champion Athlete of the World’, charged the public three pence each to view his ‘splendid prizes’ at the Waterloo Hotel in Burnley. Belfast News-Letter, 27 November 1875.

[xxvii]The Morning Post, 22 January 1873.

[xxviii]Nottinghamshire Guardian, 12 June 1868; The Standard, 14 August 1871.

[xxix]The Lancaster Gazette, 11 December 1875.

[xxx]The Lancaster Gazette, 11 December 1875.

[xxxi]The Penny Illustrated Paper, 1 November 1890.

[xxxii]Aldershot News, 18 March 1899.

[xxxiii]Country Life, 17 December 1898.

[xxxiv]The Pall Mall Gazette, 12 October 1885.

[xxxv]‘Pride and Profit’, Tinsley’s Magazinecited in the Manchester Times, 30 April 1870.

[xxxvi]New York Times, 16 March 1913.

[xxxvii]‘Foreword’, C. B. Fry, in Corinthians and Cricketers, by Edward Grayson (London, 1957), p. 3.

[xxxviii]Mangan, “Athleticism: A Case Study of the Evolution of an Educational Ideology”, in Brian Simon and Ian Bradley (eds), The Victorian Public School(London, 1975), p. 151.

[xxxix]The Latin phrase ‘A healthy mind in a healthy body’ had been associated with education as early as 1693 in Some Thoughts Concerning Educationby John Locke. It was further popularised following the development of ‘athleticism’ in the public schools after 1860. Edmund Warre, Athletics, or Physical Exercise and Recreation(London, 1884), p. 3.

[xl]Parker, The Old Lie, p. 85. 

[xli]Birley,TheWillow Wand, p. 5.

[xlii]Stephen G. Miller, Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources(Berkley, 2012), p. xv.

[xliii]Daniel A. Dombrowski, Contemporary Athletics & Ancient Greek Ideals(ReadHowYouWant.com, 2010), p. 4.

[xliv]Jernej Pisk ‘What is Good Sport: Plato’s view’, Acta Universitatis Palackianae Olomucensis GymnicaVol. 36, No. 2, p. 67. Lincoln Allison has discussed notions of ‘intrinsic’ value of ‘sportsmanism’ and ‘athleticism’ in Genetic technology and Sport: Ethical Questionsedited by Claudio Tamburrini, Torbjörn Tännsjö, (London, 2005), p. 151.

[xlv]Birley, A Social History, p. 214.

[xlvi]Gerald French, The Corner Stone of English Cricket (London, 1948), p. 134.

[xlvii]The Daily Expresshad called for the 1950-1951 Ashes tour to Australia to be called off because the MCC team was not strong enough. Norman Baker, “A More Even Playing Field?” in Hayes and Hill (eds), “Millions Like Us”?(Liverpool, 1999), pp. 125–155.

[xlviii]Kent County Cricket Year Book, 1949(Canterbury, 1949), pp. 24-25.

[xlix]The Cricket Industry, (London, 1956), p. 171.

[l]Ibid., p. 55.

[li]Duke of Westminster's Appeal, p. 24.

[lii]http://www.lords.org/mcc/mcc-spirit-of-cricket/what-is-mcc-spirit-of-cricket/Accessed, 19/11/2015.

[liii]The British Olympic Association’s (BOA) attempt to ban Dwain Chambers and David Millar from London 2012 for previous drug offences, when they were able to represent Great Britain at other international events, is a direct legacy of the influence of amateurism within British sport, and the BOA’s social and cultural history in particular.

‘Playing within the rules’ – Power, the sporting superstar and the culture of sport

British sport is imbued with a strong ethic of ‘fair play’. The concept of amateurism promoted ‘pure’ sport, played for its own sake, unadulterated by commercial influences. But for all their amateur bluster British sport was frequently tainted with class prejudice, racism and jingoistic fervor.

British fair play has always, therefore, required a contrast and there is an implicit suggestion that while we Brits play with a ‘straight bat’, foreigners cheat. The outcry over Maradona’s 'Hand of God' or Lance Armstrong’s doping contrasts starkly with the hyperbolic coverage of the Brownlee brothers recent display of sportsmanship – even though it appeared to break the rules. But what of Michael Owen’s diving, Rugby Union’s 'bloodgate' scandal or, most recently Bradley Wiggins use of therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs)?

Unlike Armstrong, a case has been made that Bradley Wiggins use of powerful performance enhancing drugs under the guise of TUEs is acceptable – fair even – because it was an approved prescription sanctioned by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) itself. As Team Sky supremo David Brailsford claimed; his team had complied with the rules at all times and stayed "the right side of the line". Indeed they had, and there’s the rub.

Like Apple, Vodafone, Amazon or Starbucks who legally avoid billions in corporation tax, Team Sky’s actions are, according to the rules in place, justified. But their actions, like those of the multinational corporations, look extremely unethical; especially in light of Team Sky’s previous claims of cleanliness.

That Apple and Team Sky remain within the rules means the condemnatory finger has to be pointed towards the people who control the organizations that make up these ‘laws’. If societies want equitable tax structures, or sporting contests that are in any way genuine, they must change, but cultures of doping, corruption, racism, sexism and homophobia persist because of their actions or, more commonly, inaction. Governing bodies had no qualms in banning athletes for life in the past for the most trivial offences, but there appears to be no genuine will to stamp out doping or other controversial issues in sport.

Only this week we have witnessed FIFA’s lamentable decision to abolish its anti-racism taskforce. Claims that its work was completed before Russia, a country with a serious problem of racism, hosts the 2018 World Cup have raised many a cynical eyebrow, even if no other country (as with doping) is blameless. But why are such counterintuitive decisions repeatedly made? And why don’t sports journalists question what they see, or are told, more often?

Cynical or not the answer is, of course, money. Who pays the piper calls the tune, and the decisions made by those at the very top of sport are seldom designed to benefit anyone but themselves or other interested parties. But while political expediency used to dominate (the provision of a UK passport to Zola Budd, or particular governments or governing bodies decision to join or ignore Olympic boycotts for instance), the basis for the majority of decisions today is economic.

Multi-millionaire sportsmen and women may benefit from this administrative leniency, but they are mere pawns in a much larger game where the governing bodies and corporate sponsors benefit most. Team Sky’s financial value to cycling, like US Postal before it, or Manchester United to the Premier League, affords them a certain amount of leverage with their sport’s governing bodies, for their success directly impacts upon their own revenue streams.

Individually, Tiger Woods receiving a two-shot penalty, instead of disqualification, for an illegal drop at the halfway stage of the 2013 US Masters is a case in point. Golf’s biggest global ‘superstar’ at the time, this decision benefitted the US PGA, the broadcaster and the sponsors far more. For as Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports, explained: "When Tiger Woods enters a tournament and when he is in contention in the final round, we see a 30 to 50 per-cent increase over what is the 'normal' rating”.

But even when a scandal breaks, the corporations such as Nike still win by claiming to have taken a moral high ground in dropping tainted athletes such as Woods or Armstrong, although they appear to have made an exception regarding Maria Sharapova.

The media are not invulnerable to riding this financial gravy train of course, and many journalists, including The Times Matthew Syed, have been accused of getting too close to Team Sky or other sporting bodies. However, there is a fine line to be tread between blatant sycophancy and hard-nosed investigative journalism. Without access there is little or no story, and journalists who ask hard questions rarely get interviews, and football managers, including Sir Alex Ferguson, have banned journalists who do not toe the line.

The result is that most of the biggest stories, such as the FIFA corruption scandal, or the slavery conditions of those building the stadiums for the 2020 Qatar World Cup, are now broken by journalists who do not specialize in sports reporting. The media, and indeed academics, have a crucial role to play in holding those who govern sport to account. Some media outlets, most obviously Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which owns a significant stake in BSkyB and recently purchased TalkSPORT radio, clearly have vested interests in the Premier League but it is incumbent on others to report objectively and challenge the actions of those in charge much more than any individual athlete (granted the Armstrong case is exceptional).

We may think what we like of Team Sky and Wiggins behavior but if the rules allow athletes to gain a competitive advantage they are going to take it. However, the sporting public, and the athletes themselves, deserve greater clarity.

Euro 2016: Why British football fans ought to support French strikers

Following the terrorist atrocities in Paris on the 13th November 2015 I quickly resolved to attend the European Championships as planned (many thanks Matt and Pierre). I realise there is an element of risk in doing so but, rather than superimposing a tricolour over my Facebook picture, I thought this was a tangible method of demonstrating both my solidarity with the French people and my disdain towards the terrorists and their misguided agendas.

For the last three months however, the French people have been facing up to another foe – their own government and the multinationals behind the TTIP Agreement. Proposed changes to the maximum working week of 35 hours have grabbed the headlines, but other changes, that make it easier for larger employers to make workers redundant for instance, are included. It is for the French to resolve but, just days before the tournament kicks-off, it is clear that large protests and threatened strikes by railway workers and airline pilots have the potential to effect some of those attending the Tournament.

I, for one, will accept such a fate should it happen. For while the reforms may not mean “a surrender to wicked, Anglo-saxon, ultra-liberal capitalism”, they do represent the thin end of a wedge very familiar to British families over the last thirty-five years. A wedge that has led to the ‘illegal’ employment practices of Mike Ashley. And the tax-dodging / ‘carpet-bagging’ antics of Philip Green being rewarded by a government post and a knighthood.

Such practices have repercussions’, and wealth distribution in the UK is now the joint sixth most unequal globally (France is fourteenth). Compounded by a steep decline in social mobility, these unsustainable trends represent the end game of Thatcherite policies that required the assistance of a militarised police force to dismantle Trade Unions termed 'the enemy within', before making targeted attacks upon other elements of ‘working-class’ culture.

The Wapping dispute and the Miners’ Strike, which led to the Battle of Orgreave, are two examples of the state’s attack on collective bargaining and working class communities nationwide. The Battle of Beanfield, which led to the largest mass arrest of civilians since the Second World War, attacked New Age Travellers and green politics, while acid house parties were also targeted. And, of course, there was the sustained attack upon football, regarded by ‘decent folk’ at the time as “a slum sport played in slum stadiums, and increasingly watched by slum people who deter decent folk from turning up”. This attack upon the ‘people’s game’ involved the caging of supporters, the introduction of now omnipresent CCTV systems, a proposed national ID Card Scheme and even electrified fences at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge ground. But this campaign reached its nadir with the Hillsborough disaster and the subsequent cover-up by South Yorkshire Police.

Although calls are being made for another inquiry into Orgreave, Hillsborough represents a solitary victory for those who were targeted by the state at that time. But it came too late. Football, as coherently argued in Hillsborough survivor Adrian Tempany’s book And the Sun Shines Now, was transformed, on the basis of the Sun's accusations of hooliganism, to appeal to the middle classes. So successful was this transformation that many of the working-class fans, whose predecessors’ had sustained football for more than 100 years, can no longer afford to attend matches or – deep irony alert – pay Rupert Murdoch’s satellite TV subscriptions.

In industry those initial, but highly significant, victories opened the door to ever more changes and amendments designed to undermine Trade Union powers and hard-won employment protections increasingly shored up by the European Union (EU Law had its own footballing cause célèbre in Jean-Marc Bosman of course) but, as the current referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union demonstrates, divide and rule politics, aided by a predominantly right-wing media, is thriving. The creation of the all too obvious, but effective, schism between ‘private’ and ‘public’ sector workers over pensions and the like, is simply the next step in alienating the working classes from each other.

Following the loss of what were higher wages in the private sector, good public sector pensions are an easy target, but the omnipresent demands of employers for ever more ‘flexible’ workforces, and the use of zero hours contracts effect all realms of work in the UK today. In football parlance; ‘we was robbed’. The UK is, therefore, an apposite example of what may be ahead for French workers should they surrender too much ground. From the outside it appears that workers in all sectors are united in this struggle and I will stand in solidarity with the French on this and terrorism – even if it means missing a much anticipated football match or two. 

A new low for English cricket? Naah, it’s just history repeating itself.

Deservedly, Bangladesh will be credited with ‘knocking-out’ a dismal England side from the 2015 Cricket World Cup. But, as is the way with tournament sport, it was England’s inability to add to a solitary victory, against Scotland, which has seen England eliminated with one game still left to play. How, when we consider population size and the number of professional cricketers at the disposal of England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), may we account for this ignominious performance?

Well it is not difficult, for we have been here before. The foundations of this epic failure lie in the continued self-interest among those who have run much of British sport for the last 150 years – the vast majority of that time under strictly enforced amateurism. Professionalism – in terms of coordinated organisation, world-class facilities and serious training – following the ploughing of lottery millions into a variety of British sports, is something we assume runs through all British sports today, but some sports are more ‘professional’ than others. As the humiliating performance in the World Cup suggests, cricket, which remains tied to the elitist ideologies and an anachronistic structure of the Victorian era, is not one of them.

In a society increasingly riven with class distinctions, the development of British sport from the 1870s was inevitably influenced by such prejudices. As Tony Collins’ seminal work Rugby’s Great Split demonstrates, one sport was even divided (in England at least) upon class-lines (the regionalism involved a lesser, but related, factor). The hypocrisy among middle-class men who controlled the Rugby Football Union in denying predominantly northern working class players’ ‘broken-time’ payments for lost wages, while they were allowed ‘out of pocket’ expenses was shared among those who controlled the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). Professionalism in cricket, almost universally a working class phenomenon, was too well established however and, in an increasingly popular and commercialised sport, late-Victorian professionals, such as George Lohmann of Surrey, became some of the very first working class heroes.^[1]  

This was problematic enough for the elites, but the presence of ever larger numbers of working class support at grounds, led some of the cricket elites to not only propose the abolition of the County Championship, or the establishment of an ‘all-amateur’ competition,^[2] others sought a prohibitive rise in entrance fees,^[3] in order to eradicate any working class presence on or off the field.

These reactionary proposals notwithstanding, some, including the cricket author H. V. Dorey, argued that professionals were still necessary as coaches and ground bowlers (indentured servants) to the counties and affluent members of elite clubs. It was these ‘subscribers’ – the members of clubs such as the MCC – men who he regarded as the ‘backbone of cricket, as in everything else’, for whom the game was run.^[4] Robert Morris has called such associations subscriber democracies, but there was little democratic about associations which controlled (all-male) membership via personal recommendations, expensive membership (a form of financial apartheid) and, in the case of professionalism, increasingly humiliating distinctions between amateurs and professionals until 1963.^[5]

First-class cricket has never been a democracy. Unlike the community-centric meritocracy of the Midland and the Northern leagues, which the MCC and its mouthpiece Wisden reviled, so-called ‘first-class’ cricket in England has never been run for the benefit of the supporters.^[6] As it was in 1890, the game is run for a tiny minority of demographically narrow (white, male and over 40) supporters who still pay their membership to the eighteen ‘professional’ counties. Unfortunately, the county clubs still hold the balance of power within the ECB, and turkeys’ seldom vote for Christmas!

In his scorching analysis of English Cricket, Pommies:  England Cricket Through an Australian Lens, William Buckland reveals the way forward. In short, Buckland compares the Australian grade system with the bloated English County Championship (ECC) and comes to a very simple conclusion: There are too many nonviable county clubs employing too many mediocre professionals. The game, he argues, must be trimmed, and less, but more competitive and meaningful cricket played. Player talent would be concentrated, rather than diluted, and the injuries that come with an overly long County Championship avoided.

County cricket survives in England because of the public’s interest in the national side, and yet changes to the game’s structure that ought to bring about their desire for a consistently competitive England team are ignored. Unlike football, where the success of individual clubs in lucrative (and therefore more ‘prestigious’) league or cup competitions such as the Premier League and Champions League takes precedent, the ECC is a cartel kept afloat by Rupert Murdoch’s money. One could examine the serious damage that the ECB’s acceptance of this money has done in terms of public access (a fraction of the 7.4m viewers who watched the 2005 ashes watch Sky's coverage) in more detail, but the point here is that cricket is being run by the wrong people, for the wrong people (themselves). On-field success, as long as the money from Murdoch (or charlatans like Allen Stanford) keeps rolling in, is almost incidental.

The future ascension of Colin Graves to the Chairmanship of the ECB might provide an opportunity for reform. Although Geoffrey Boycott appeared reticent at the end of the Bangladesh match to provide ‘on-air’ solutions to the current malaise, he did reveal that he wished to have a chat with Graves. I’d suggest Graves also talks to Bob Willis and the other members of the Cricket Reform Group, whose sound-headed proposals were assiduously ignored by the ECB in 2003.

The game is at a genuine crossroads. Successive generations of supporters, and indeed players, have been let down by the game’s ‘custodians’. Under their watch cricket’s status as the national game was lost and English cricket’s genuine supporters have had to ‘enjoy’ cyclical success at best, rather than the sustained, planned, success of the Australians. Furthermore, it has become increasingly out of the financial reach of the less well-off who would like to support in person or watch on their televisions. The inspirational effects that followed the ‘free-to-air’ coverage in 2005 now lost, the youth required to maintain the lower levels of the game are absent in the numbers required.

Unless root and branch changes are made, it will not simply be embarrassing international failures that the cricket authorities will have presided over. There is a real possibility – if the current trajectory is maintained – that cricket will have become the boutique pastime that Dorey and his ilk always wanted.

---

[1] Cricket, 29/12/1892, 508.

[2] Woking News, 23/8/1895.

[3] Cricket, 25/11/1894, 444.

[4] Thompson and Long, Club Cricketers’ Official Handbook, 1913, 12.

[5] Morris “Clubs, societies and associations”, 412-413.

[6] Birley, A Social History of English Cricket, 214.

The Death of Phillip Hughes: Cricket’s ‘Diana’ moment?

I remember the day Diana, Princess of Wales, died very, very clearly. The day began with a phone call from a mate I’d been out drinking with the previous night: “Guess who’s dead?!” he excitedly shrieked. “Errr … Frank Sinatra?” I mumbled, slowly regaining my senses. “NOOO!” was the reply. “Who’s the most famous woman in the world?” he prompted. “Ummm … the queen?”. “NOOO!”. “The queen mother?” I stumbled, really wracking my addled brain. “NOOO!! More famous than that!!” “Sorry” I said, not being able to process the fact that it could be a young person who had died, “I’m lost mate”. “DIANA! Princess Diana is dead!”

I was more flummoxed than shocked (in my old job as a police photographer I used to deal with the death of old and young regularly). The only detail (details at this early stage were scant) that bothered me was how it had happened?

A few days later, once the basic details had emerged, my mate and the rest of my gang went on holiday for a week or so. I forget – as an enthusiastic participant in ‘lad’s holidays’ – why I did not go, but not sunning myself in Spain left me to face the nation's disproportionate and inescapable outpouring of ‘grief’. The lads had returned, all suntanned and white-shirted, in time for us all to re-convene down the pub for England's World Cup qualifier with Moldova. As Elton John's 'Candle in the Wind' was played, yet again, I recall loudly uttering something along the lines of “can’t we just get on with our lives – please?”, only for the mate who had called that fateful morning to snarl in my face: “You’re out of order! She was the people’s princess!” Diana had truly become the outstanding symbol of emotional grandstanding.

This, it has to be said, was quite a departure from the emotional norms of British society (my mate is a sound and highly intelligent man). The normally reserved and carefully measured response to similar events obviously would not suffice in this case and countless bouquets of flowers, candles, signatures in books of remembrance and tears manifested from all sections of society. Blair’s canny aphorism; ‘the people’s princess’ (the spot Blair made the speech even has a plaque recording the event) worked so well, because it was – for the most part – true. 

Other societies react to death very differently. We have witnessed, largely thanks to our viewing the custom on TV coverage of Spanish or Italian football, British supporters increasingly adopt a minute’s applause in preference to the customary silence (rudely interrupted or not). In other countries, and this may well be true for ‘younger’ societies that lack a long history of stoicism such as the UK, emotion is dealt with differently.

Australia, and the cricket community globally, are mourning the death of the 25 year old international cricketer Phillip Hughes. His tragic demise from the impact of a cricket ball during a match at the SCG is cause for great sorrow, but has this tragedy – like Diana’s death – been overdone? Hughes appears to have been the ideal of Australian masculinity: ruggedly good-looking, a country boy made good, seemingly indestructible, and a thoroughly decent ‘bloke’. He was undoubtedly a talented cricketer but, statistically speaking, he was unlikely to ever become one of the game’s genuine ‘greats’ (I wish of course he was alive to prove me wrong). This has not stopped a Diana-like outpouring of emotion – seemingly stirred up by some sections of the media (four out of five of Australia’s free-to-air channels broadcast the funeral live) and, most disturbingly, by Cricket Australia themselves. Only a miniscule minority who are currently grieving ever met the man, let alone knew him well. While we have witnessed genuine grief amongst the cricket fraternity who did know him well, we are being confronted by Twitter campaigns by those who did not. I.e. #putyourbatsout and #63notout (the latter, which encourages the performance of a good deed, and may at least provide a minor legacy of some sort), and even the suggestion by Sky correspondent David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd that any score of 63 be applauded in Hughes' memory.

As the distasteful politicisation of wearing a poppy also ‘inspires’, I do not wish to feel obliged to publicly acknowledge the death of a soldier or a sportsman or woman. These are highly personal and what should, for the most part, remain private thoughts. Hedley Verity, the Yorkshire and England cricketer, who died of his wounds in the Second World War did not receive such tributes (he does however have a pub named after him), nor the more recent and, to my mind, more shocking sporting death of Ayrton Senna. And yet they are remembered and rightfully revered, but that a relatively unestablished cricketer is thought to warrant extreme ceremonies of public remembrance (potentially in any future innings) reveals a good deal about modern sport and society.

It has been suggested in the excellent blog by David Rowe, which exposes the public’s complicity ‘in the damage sportspeople can do to each other and to themselves’, that cricket’s primacy within Australian culture, in-part, explains the current outpourings of emotion. This may be so but, having witnessed a similarly disproportionate response within the Australian media (but, interestingly, not the public) to the premature death of the actor Heath Ledger, something else must be at play. I’m uncertain exactly what that is, but I have my suspicions, although Australia may be a special case, that our societal obsession with ‘celebrities’, and their role in sustaining an increasingly trivialised media, does play a significant role. Sport is, after all, a highly trivial phenomena.  

Today, celebrity culture is omnipresent, but how we choose to react to tragic events such as this, or the anniversaries of tragedies of the past, appears to be dictated by the media (and sports clubs or administrative organisations) - this unaccountable accident does not compare, either in scale or in media reaction, to the Hillsborough tragedy. In this case the tragic (criminal even?) death of 'ordinary' football supporters led to their public vilification. 

What do these ‘celebrities’ represent, and do they ‘belong’ to us 'ordinary' folk? Hughes may well have represented one future of Australian cricket, and his death, one hopes, may result in more measured forms of competitiveness in future, but does the fact someone is in the public eye provide us with the excuse to gawp at their death behind a veil of crocodile tears? The internet search engine Bing recently revealed that 2014's top internet search was Peaches Geldof who had done little of note prior to dying of a heroin overdose. Then of course there was the very public life and death of Jade Goody, blisteringly satirised by Charlie Brooker. Whether genuine or not, unless we knew the departed personally, there will always be an element of voyeurism involved in our ‘mourning’ of such celebrities. The media, as it is beginning to recognise in relation to mental health, need to reign-in the emotion and report events such as this in more measured tones.

Phillip Hughes deserves to be remembered, but as a son, a brother, and yes (for the rest of us), as a cricketer who died doing what he loved. Not as the poster boy of mass hysteria engineered to elevate the moral standing of cricket, nor boost circulation or viewing figures. 

‘Another “Bombshell” Fails to Explode at the BBC’

That it now looks as if the BBC will be allowing Jeremy Clarkson, his co-presenters, and Top Gear producer Andy Wilman, to remain within their employment is hard to accept following their latest debacle in Argentina.

Clarkson, a professional ‘troll’, who has previously been disciplined for making jokes about murdered women (who happened to work as prostitutes), Indians and Mexicans, and for using the ‘N’ word, was found guilty this year of making racist comments by Ofcom. Since then, Clarkson has been reportedly “drinking in the last chance saloon” having been, yet again, reprimanded by BBC chiefs.

The lack of any direct action from the BBC following the number plate controversy, which referenced the date of the Falklands War is troubling enough, but Clarkson’s accusation that the Argentinian government ‘orchestrated’ the protests, in which he claimed "lives were at stake", only adds fuel to the fire. It also suggests an element of desperation on Clarkson’s behalf.

I cannot speak for the BBC Trust's Board of Governors, but the BBC’s reply to my complaint, that the programme makers: “would like to assure viewers that this was an unfortunate coincidence and the cars were neither chosen for their registration plates, nor were new registration plates substituted for the originals” does not wash. I, for one, was not born yesterday, and I prescribe to the Argentinian view that the events were not "an unfortunate coincidence".

If it were just the number plates it might have been possible to have given the show's producers/presenters the benefit of the doubt, but one aspect of the controversy has been overlooked: the specific choice of a Porsche 928 (Clarkson's mode of transport in Argentina, and the vehicle which displayed the number plate H982 FLK).

In the film Risky Business (1983), a Porsche 928 is accidentally sunk in a river, and following its retrieval and delivery to a garage, Tom Cruise's character ‘Joel’ and his friends are asked by the garage owner "who's the U-Boat commander?" See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bodVVtqmbZE 

Clarkson et al know their popular culture very well - especially any films that feature 'snazzy' sports cars - and this is just one coincidence too many for my liking. Although a somewhat obscure ‘in-joke’, if this is not a reference to the British submarine that controversially sank the ARA General Belgrano, I don't know what is.

How am I so sure? There can be no doubt that a great deal of highly detailed planning would have gone into the show (clearly one reason for the show’s success), and such references fit the programmes ‘laddish’ Modus Operandi, and Clarkson’s jingoistic (xenophobic even?) world-view perfectly. I’m pretty certain that Clarkson’s ego would also have relished the thought of cruising around Argentina in a metaphorical ‘submarine’ – even if it was built by ‘ze Germans’.

Clarkson and his colleagues must now be beyond redemption, should the BBC choose to act. But it looks increasingly unlikely that they will, because, akin to the bankers who brought the country to its knees in 2008, Clarkson is the biggest kid in the playground, who scares the teachers and thus never suffers the full consequences of his actions.

As in the City and politics, much of this is related to the Old Boys Network, and it is vividly represented within the Top Gear production office, for the show’s producer, Andy Wilman, went to public school (Repton) with Clarkson. Consequently, Wilman has been eager to protect his old friend and colleague to the hilt, by previously dismissing racism as “light hearted wordplay” . The main reason for the BBC’s lack of action however, is commercial.

The Top Gear franchise is one of the BBC’s biggest money making ventures. But, tellingly, only after the Corporation had to purchase Clarkson’s share of the rights to the show (The BBC paid £8.4m for his 30%, Wilman owned 20%) in 2012. With shows such as Doctor Who and Top Gear making the BBC's commercial arm more than £300m in 2013, can the BBC afford to sack the goose that lays the golden eggs – no matter how problematic?

The commercial basis of the decision to give Clarkson ever more chances is a wider societal problem in microcosm. The rhetoric of Clarkson’s friend, and fellow member of the ‘Chipping Norton Set’, the Prime Minister, that so-called ‘wealth creators’ deserve or warrant tax breaks, or that banks are ‘too big to fail’, is replicated in the BBC’s ineptitude. Just as no high-ranking banker has faced any criminal charges for industry-wide fraud, Clarkson gets away with making racist remarks or carrying out offensive pranks on a public broadcast channel because he generates money. But, beyond his £12m contract over three years, at what cost to the BBC?

As a public broadcaster, funded by the license fee, the BBC should put commercial considerations behind those that ensure that it remains "independent, impartial and honest", or help in "sustaining citizenship and civil society". Repeatedly defending a presenter/producer who has been found guilty of racism can only damage the reputation of the BBC, at a time when it has faced criticisms for political bias and financial profligacy.

The time has come for those in charge of the BBC to make a decisive stand. Either they sack Clarkson and Wilman, or they publicly state that everyday racism is an acceptable aspect of the Corporation’s activities. Option one is, of course, the only viable course of action, for Clarkson’s ‘last drink’, like the public’s patience, looks like it has run out.

‘Respect’: Does it mean anything anymore?

The news from Holland this week that a linesman, Richard Nieuwenhuizen, died on Monday (3/12/2012) after an attack by players during an U17 match in Almere (east of Amsterdam), the previous day left me feeling physically sick. How it has traumatised his son, who was playing in the match, we may only contemplate. This undeniably sad and worrying event not only calls into question attitudes on and off football fields, but social values within societies at large. However these ‘children’ may not have reacted in this way had an 'adult' or group of ‘adults’ clearly demonstrated that such behaviour is unacceptable, and this calls into question how parents interact with and discipline their children.

'Mindless' violence, be it by the citizenry or the authorities, is common in many societies throughout the world, and numerous reasons for this have been postulated: binge drinking, violence on TV, film and video games, drugs, boredom and alienation to name just a few. Such issues and their broader societal origins have been discussed in depth elsewhere, and I would therefore like to address the origins of this tragedy in a sporting context.

This unbelievably sad event is, in my humble opinion, the sharp end of what, in the most famous instance, Alex Ferguson instigated at Manchester United (with Roy Keane his principle attack dog). Behaviour, in an ever more lucrative Premier League, that was eagerly emulated by others such as Arsène Wenger, Kenny Dalglish et al and many of their players. Pressurising match officials is not unique to football, and it arguably has a longer history in cricket where the ‘sledge’ is almost elevated to an art-form (W.G. Grace being a very early exponent). More recently the Australian captains Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting developed this concept, and with the mercurial Shane Warne at their disposal the Australians were able to ‘ooh’ and ‘aww’ or appeal off almost every ball until an umpire did not know what was up or down, ‘in’ or ‘out’. This relentless pressure (remember this could last for hours at a time over five days) infamously led to the mental disintegration (and early retirement) of umpire Steve Bucknor during a Test Match against India in 2008.

This ‘poor sportsmanship’ towards officials rather than on-field opponents is the worrying development. West Indian Colin Croft’s shoulder barge of umpire Fred Goodall in New Zealand in 1981and England captain Mike Gatting’s infamous finger-wagging outburst at umpire Shakoor Rana in 1987 apart, cricket, having introduced neutral umpires in 2002, appears to have kept a reasonably tight lid upon such actions towards officials. But as the much touted yet ineffectual ‘Respect’ campaign suggests, football has a much bigger problem. Sadly (having seen it works/provides an advantage), many amateur managers and players have emulated the aggressive and intimidatory actions of those they see on TV; actions that very often fail to attract the disciplinary or legal consequences they deserve. However, influences closer to home must be regarded as more influential, and the actions of parents have been under the spotlight for many years. Ian Stone reported on this issue once again, and the actions being taken by the National Children's Football Alliance, for the BBC only a day before Mr. Nieuwenhuizen was attacked.

In broadening out this issue once again, we need to question the underlying values, attitudes, and norms in behaviour, these ‘young men’ were brought up to believe were acceptable. Children today are seldom ever wrong, often possess an over blown sense of entitlement, and they do not appear to be able to accept a failure to get their own way, or be taught/made aware that sometimes you have to accept defeat or fail a task. I certainly remember learning the hard way that I had no God given right to anything – not even a minute on the basketball court having waited over two hours after school for a team from London to turn up (not good in a sport where rolling substitutes may be used)! The same went for my parents, although my father (a referee in what is now the Ryman League) thought the basketball incident a step too far and I never played basketball for the school again.

That was however, as far as my father was prepared to intervene (a quiet word with me in the car on the way home - a stand up row with the games teacher would have been mortifying, but my father knew it was up to me to stand up for my 14 year old self). However, the behaviour of overly protective parents today: running onto the pitch to berate officials at junior matches, threatening teachers who have the temerity to discipline or attempt to feed their children healthy food at school etc. needs to be addressed, for these Dutch children did not react in this way without some 'adult' either showing them the way, or allowing similarly aggressive behaviour to go unpunished.

In an age of austerity and reduced social mobility, we, and especially the generation at school or university today, are increasingly less likely to get everything we may ‘want’ out of life. It is thus important that we develop or re-discover an ability to not only consider our actions before we act (and the consequences of those actions if we do not), but to have a healthy appreciation that ‘life is not fair’ sometimes. The British (English) have been lampooned in many ways for our stoicism in the past. However, the prescription of a healthy dose of modern day stoicism would not go amiss. I think we are going to need it.