I Believe and other essays

Wrestling, that worthy and ancient English sport, has almost ceased to exist. I have had a cottage in Cornwall for some years and it is my privilege to know many of the champions of the past in this chief old home of the game.

I know what it was once, how splendid and stimulating to the life of the community. And what is wrestling to-day? It is a sporadic contest, between great players indeed, but one which is utterly spoilt and discredited, when looked upon from the true sportsman’s point of view. In the most cynical and open way many of the sporting newspapers discuss the probability of this or that bout being a “square” one or not. With the indifference with which one would discuss the chances of an egg proving to be fresh or stale, some journalists determine the pros and cons of honour and dishonour.

I have a friend who is a theatrical agent and entrepreneur. Among his various activities, he is the manager for the champion wrestler of the world. “You never know,” he said to me at dinner, “you never really know the truth about the bona fides of many wrestling bouts until the contest is over. Of course men like ’ – ’ and ’ – ’ are absolutely square. They are the haute noblesse of the game. They’ve got to be. But you may take it from me that dozens and dozens of contests are faked in the interests of the betting ring.”

After extreme youth is over, life mercifully dulls the hunger for perfection in all of us. There never was a time in the history of horse-racing when people did not bet. Nor does one expect the impossible. But while racing was never more popular and more strongly organized than it is to-day, it was never so provocative of evil, so manqué from the true sportsman’s point of view. The men of carrion passions, and the army of muddy knaves who live by the exploitation and bespatterment of the noblest of sports, are legion.

The smaller fry who make existence possible for the knaves – the ordinary men who bet regularly on races – are millions. There is no need to insist upon the fact, it is as dismal and obvious as a lump of clay. The whole atmosphere of the turf is like the degradation of the air in a close bedroom with the windows shut.

It is not my province or intention here to go very deeply into illustrative detail in the matter of the turf. It is better to be luminous than voluminous. But there are one or two points which may be new and instructive for the non-gambling sportsman.

Here is a recent quotation from a well-known English “sporting” paper – one of those, by the way, which conveys “humour” direct from the pit to the front page.

It is about some English jockeys in America —

“Our jockeys are having a hard time, in a way, inasmuch as they are being kept under the closest surveillance by Pinkerton detectives. They are practically caged off from the public, are escorted to the scales and paddock, are not allowed to speak to any one except an employer, and then only when mounting, and their valets must wear a distinctive uniform, with numbers on their sleeves. This is reform with a vengeance, and by no means agreeable to some of our young swells, who are also shadowed after the races.”

“By sports like these are all their cares beguiled!”

Was Goldsmith a prophet?

It is not always easy to remember that the professed aim of the Jockey Club is “the furtherance of the breeding and preservation of the English thoroughbred horse.”

Yet to-day the officers of foreign armies buy Australian walers. They won’t purchase English stallions. I belong to the “Cercle Privée civil et militaire” of Bruges, a great military centre. Every day the General commanding the district and his staff are in the Club. They tell me that English horses are no longer looked upon as they were upon the Continent.

Does not this “give one furiously to think,” as my friend the General said here the other morning? Doping in the interests of the gambling market seems to be beginning to tell!

The gambling industry is organized with consummate skill and great business capacity.

Gambling by post is almost incredibly upon the increase. In Middleburg and Flushing there are twelve huge betting firms. One person employs ninety people in his office, and has his own printing establishment, which is always glutted with work.

Often £1000 is received by one firm in a single day – nearly all in small bets, and all from England. The post-offices of Dutch towns of the size of Middleburg or Flushing normally keep in stock stamps which will supply the needs of a population of 20,000 persons. Now, these two towns are compelled to keep enough to supply a population of 200,000 – all for the “furtherance of the breeding and preservation,” etc., etc.

Here is another significant fact which may possibly elucidate the recent and somewhat cryptic utterance, “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton just as certainly as the battle of Spion Kop was lost upon the playing fields of Sandhurst.”

The fact is this …

In the issue of The War Office Times, May 25, 1905, occurs a flagrant puff of a bookmaker, who without the humour of a less eminent confrère who described himself as a “brass finisher” in the census returns, calls himself a “high-class turf-accountant.”

“We strongly advise any of our readers who require a high-class Turf-accountant to send for Mr. – ’s book of rules, bound in leather, which will be sent post free to applicants. We have convinced ourselves that this is a thoroughly genuine business, and, as such, we have no hesitation in recommending it to our readers.”

I have the book “bound in leather,” and a good many others also, which I acquired for the purposes of this article.

And precious and elaborate productions they are! The ingenuity of red morocco and gilding, of alluring propositions and the suggestion of a bludgeon-sturdy honesty deserve the highest praise. I was especially delighted with the telegraphic code of one hero, which used the names of fish to symbolize the amount of “investments.” “Salmon,” for example, means “put me ten pounds on.”

All the denizens of ocean are used save one…

With commendable modesty, or possibly a fellow feeling, this worthy has omitted “shark.”

One has said enough to outline – I hope vividly and strongly – how Sport is being spoilt by gambling.

Sport, thank goodness, is not yet retrograde owing to this curse. But it may be. Let us all remember that progress is merely the power of seeing new beauties. The more Sport progresses unhindered by gambling, the sooner will it take its high place in life and fulfil its noble destiny.

And every sportsman can do something to help that progress.

The fiery Erasmus writes this of Sir Thomas More, who was a thorough sportsman, to his German friend, Ulrich von Hutten: —

“Gambling of all kinds, balls, dice and such like he detests. None of that sort are to be found about him. In short, he is the best type of sportsman.”

“Nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus.”

Note. —Since this essay was written, three short articles appeared in the sporting columns of the Daily Mail which are a striking corroboration of my contentions. All the articles appeared within a few days of each other, and I print parts of them as an appendix.

FOOTBALL AND ALCOHOL

HOW PLAYERS MAY LENGTHEN THEIR CAREERS

By William McGregor.

I dealt a few days ago with the question of what constituted a sensible diet for footballers, and hinted that the so-called special training which teams undergo on the eve of a great encounter was often prejudicial rather than beneficial.

Now, a well-known medical man, who fills the position of official doctor to one of our leading football clubs, met me on the evening of the day that the article appeared and said (excuse the apparent egotism, but it is necessary for the purpose of the article), “That was a really good article of yours in the London Daily Mail. You put the matter precisely as I should put it, as a medical man. You might follow it up with an article pointing out that there are two abuses which footballers suffer from, viz. errors in regard to eating, and errors in regard to drinking. If you can put in a strong plea for either the abolition of alcohol, or the sparing use of alcohol by footballers, you will be doing the game a good service, and you will be doing the players a good service.”

I then remembered a little incident which occurred at the Aston Villa ground early in the season. The occasion was a match played during that tropical weather, weather which was utterly unfit for football. Violent exercise such as football imposed a very severe strain upon the men that day.

As soon as the interval was over, a medical man came up to me, and in quite excited accents said, “I say, Mr. McGregor, do you know that they have been giving the visiting team spirits during the interval? I have never heard of such a foolish proceeding. Why, alcohol is the worst possible thing for footballers to have at any time, but more especially on a day like this. You could not have anything more heating than spirits.”

Speaking from a general rather than a professional or technical experience, I agreed with him. I asked him, as a medical man, what he would have given the men under such peculiar circumstances. His answer was, “At any rate, I should not have given them alcohol. I do not know that I should have given them anything. The best thing would have been for them to have rinsed their mouths out with cold water.”

CHAMPAGNE OR LEMONS?

In a match which took place in the Midlands last season, the home team gave a particularly poor display in the second half, and one of the directors said to me, “They have been behaving foolishly to our men. The trainer gave them champagne during the interval, and I do not think that is a good drink for them to have. The momentary feeling of exhilaration following a glass of champagne soon wears off.”

If the form manifested by the team which had the champagne that day may be taken as a criterion as to the merits of champagne as a stimulant for football purposes, then all I can say is, that I never want to see a team receive such a stimulant again. It may not have been the champagne that caused their poor form; but at any rate their play was poor.

I recall another interesting instance in which champagne played a part. I am going back a long time now, but the circumstances were exceptional.

Away in the remote eighties, Moseley (as they often were then) were in possession of the Midland Counties Rugby Challenge Cup, and one of their supporters was interested in Aston Villa. I do not know whether it was Kenneth Wilson or not, for Kenneth Wilson, I may say, was a Pollokshields man, who was in business in Birmingham. He was a splendid athlete, and played for Aston Villa, and also for Moseley under Rugby rules simultaneously. I expect he had something to do with the incident.

At any rate, the Cup made its appearance at Perry Barr on the day that Aston Villa were playing an English Cup tie with Darwen. Now the Aston Villa team of that period, captained by the great Archie Hunter, was as bonny a set in a social sense as I have ever known. They were grand footballers, and played the game for all they were worth when they were on the field. But it was a loose and lax age as compared with the present football era, and during the interval some one filled the Cup with champagne, and the Villa players drank to the prosperity of the Moseley Club – and very bad football they played after the interval, too.

I do not suppose for a moment that any one player had much champagne, but from what I could see of their demeanour, I came to the conclusion that champagne was a bad thing to play football on. At any rate, the Villa had the greatest difficulty in avoiding defeat at the hands of Darwen. If I remember aright, the great Hugh McIntyre, who died in London last year, and was better known as a Blackburn Rover, kept goal brilliantly for Darwen that day.

THE GREATEST ENEMY

You hear of well-known footballers kicking over the traces, passing from club to club, and marring what might have been great reputations. If you will look into the history of these men you will find that in nineteen cases out of twenty their bad relations with their employers are due to the fact that they are accustomed to imbibe too much alcohol. Alcohol is, indeed, the footballer’s greatest enemy; at any rate, to put it simply and straightforwardly, no man ever played football the better for taking alcohol, and many men have played it infinitely worse by reason of their indulgence therein.

Every football manager likes to get together a team of tee-totalers. If you take the records of the greatest players, or perhaps I might say the great players who have had phenomenally long and honourable careers, you will find that in nearly every case they were either life-long abstainers or rigidly moderate men. I could give many instances if space permitted.