Sport and Colonialism in 19th Century Australasia - LA84 Foundation

sculling at the Henley Regatta in England. In New Zealand a
chimney sweep was as acceptable as a land-owner in a rugby or
rowing club. The exclusion, as it did for mountain guides and
rugby leaguers, only came into force if the person accepted
payments for his physical performance. The constitution of the
New Zealand Amateur Rowing Association stated "an oarsman or
sculler must be a paying member of a recognised rowing club and
he must not himself have derived any pecuniary profits, indirectly
or directly, from rowing..." 30
In England the amateur
athlete did more than disapprove of payment for sports perform-
ance. He viewed the professional as an athletic leper - to
play with a professional was "degrading for respectable men". 31
In the Gentlemen versus the Players soccer match of 1886 this
social distinction was compounded by the costumes worn by the
"workers" and the "gentlemen". There were dark blue jerseys
for the professionals and spotless white shirts for the amateurs.
32
A most telling comment on the extent to which the
class structure differentiated between the amateur and the professional
in England stems from a decision by the "founding
fathers" of the modern Olympics. Meeting at the Sorbonne in
1894, they rejected and "declared against the British restriction
on manual labourers". 33
In New Zealand the amateur ethos
was so firmly embedded that the awarding of financial compensation
for lost working time was not allowed. 34
By World War I
there was a propagandist tenor to the anti-professional debate
in New Zealand. "Professional soccer players are not wanted in
the trenches... their endurance is less than a third that of the
ordinary soldier... their nerves are so acute that they cannot
stand gunfire." 35
In the early years of the nineteenth century the word
"amateur" in Britain had a clear class connotation. It meant
merely a gentleman lover of the sport. Clearly there were
categories of British sport that operated as class preserves in
the nineteenth century. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St
Andrews, the Quorn Hunt in Leicestershire, the Marylebone
Cricket Club in London and the Royal Yacht Club at Cowes, were
bastions of aristocratic influence and upper class exclusiveness.
For colonial New Zealand, and especially so in the early
pioneer years, there was a vehement disclaimer of class barriers.
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