SPORTING COMMENTS

By Romany
New Era In Boxing
The meeting of Petersen and Harvey at the end of January at Wembley will be something more than a championship bout: it will mark the beginning of a new era in the boxing game.
It is quite a long time since we told you that the reign of the boxer's manager was drawing to an end. And not before time!
Petersen and Harvey are typical of the new generation of boxers; sound, decent young fellows, reasonably well educated and well able to look after themselves. Acting in the spirit the British Board of Boxing Control wishes to encourage, they made their own arrangements for their fight with the promoter and the matchmaker.
The transaction went through in double quick time, there was no haggling or wrangling. There was a slight display of temperament on Petersen's part. which may have been just good publicity; but, apart from that, it might have been an ordinary business deal between ordinary business men.
GOOD AND BAD MANAGERS The result is that they will not only fight for more money than has ever been fought for, under cover, in England before, but, having fought for it, they will get it.
There could not have been two better men to start the new order of things. Not only are they the two most promincnt fighters in the country, but both of them have been well managed in the past. With them there is no question of getting out of the clutches of grasping, or worse, managers.
There are many boxers, both here and abroad, far less favourably situated. Young fellows who are being exploited, fighting for big purses and after the manager has had his "cut " and " expenses " have been paid, getting away with a pittance. Lads who have to slug their way through life to finish punch-drunk or blind, or both, with never a chance to get out while the going was good.
There are good managers. There always have been good honest managers. The trouble is that there are bad ones, too. It is the bad ones who have dragged an honourable calling into disrepute.
B.B.B.C.'S UPHILL FIGHT The manager was a very necessary person not so very long ago; for, not so very long ago, boxers, and most other people as well, were generally illiterate and quite unable to exploit their talent to its best advantage. They needed somebody to look after them, to see that they got a reasonable share of the money they attracted. The manager came into being and raised the status and increased the remuneration of boxers considerably.
The manager was all right so long as he worked for the boxer, it was when he began to make the boxer work for him that the trouble arose. The game got so crooked that hardly anybody who knew anything about it ever believed any fight at all was straight.
The B.B.B.C. has had a very uphill fight in its efforts to clean the game. It has had all sorts of mud slung at it, and, even now, its friends are still both few and shy; but nobody has ever questioned its honesty and straightforwardness.
There is no reason why the B.B.B.C. should not become to boxing what the F.A. is to football, what the R. and A. is to golf, and what the M.C.C. is to cricket (it can take warning from the last-named body and learn what to be and what not to become as well).
POPULAR ALL-IN WRESTLING If boxers can be persuaded to stand by the Board of Control, the board can be trusted to stand by them. It can check up on their arrangements, assess their values, control the proportions of their remuneration, and even, when necessary, or required, arrange their matches. There is no reason why it should not, through controlled and affiliated clubs, make collective training arrangements for novices and beginners and even stage the preliminary and subsidiary bouts in connection with big contests, and the exhibitions throughout the country which are not half so popular or so well supported as they ought to be.
A promoter, who stages both boxing and all-in wrestling shows. told us a few days ago that he was thinking of dropping the boxing because it was expensive to arrange and did not draw the crowd; whereas all-in wrestling is much cheaper and enormously popular.
Everybody knows that ninety per cent. of all-in wrestling is fake and food for " suckers." Why they go to it is another story, possibly a pathological story. Why Englishmen stay away from England's own traditional sport of boxing is disturbing. They want it to be straight and are rather more than doubtful about it. If the Petersen-Harvey contest can give cause and strength to a feeling of reassurance, it will go down to posterity as one of the most important fights on record.
Money Makes A Good Football Team
It takes more than money to make a football team in spite of what sporting scribes say to the contrary. Both Brentford and Tottenham Hotspur are being perpetually exhorted to spend and go on spending 'till it hurts to save their position in the one case and ensure promotion in the other.
It is important to have money if you want to have a good team; it is more important to know how, when, and where to spend it; it is most important of all to know what to do with the men you buy and, knowing it, to be able to do it.
Herbert Chapman was a lavish spender when he had the money to spend. He would have been a good manager even of a poor club, and it would not have stayed poor long.
He would not have boasted of having £50,000-worth of players in his reserve side; he would have been ashamed of it, and rightly, for such is evidence of unintelligent expenditure. It may he indicative of riches, but it shows a sad lack of football sense. It is like wearing diamonds in deshabille—they don't belong, they don't deliver the goods, and they look horrible.
PLAYERS WHO COST £5,000 Aston Villa is another case in point. As a team they are in the £100,000 class; they were very nearly there before they bought Cummings and Palethorpe, at which time they were firmly established at the bottom of the championship table, with a tally of something like three goals a match against them.
The Villa have a dozen men on their books who cost £5,000 and over, and the man who scored the goal that gave them their first point for ages they got " with a pound of tea." The old Villa has gone, and the sooner it comes back the better everybody who knows, and loves, football will be pleased. The test way to look for talent is with a candle or a cruse of midnight oil. A cheque-book makes a pretty poor flare; but that is always the way with people who have money to burn: they burn it.
The Ryder Cup Expedition
Would you believe it? The Ryder Cu" expedition, the greatest disappointment L , major golf of recent years, resulted in golfing loss about which the less said the better, and in a financial profit which will form an interesting topic of conversation for ages in all club-rooms after the bar closes.
Do not think that the American public flocked in their thousands to gloat over their beaten foe. They did not, Americans don't. Americans have as much use for losers at any game as they have at billiards (there is a little subtlety in the analogy, hut don't let it worry you). They just say " Nerts!" or something equally characteristic and refined, and stay away.
It would not have made very much difference if they had turned up, as our team got no share of any gate-money collected in the States.
Nevertheless, after paying all the expenses of the tour, travelling and hotels amounting to £1,700, kit allowance at £50 a man (and no prohibition of bowlerhats as was the case when the last Scottish football team crossed the Atlantic), £25 each on the way back on the boat, and a later grant of £20 to cover out-of-pocket expenses, the Ryder Cup fund shows a credit balance of £1,030.
Where did it all come from? You may remember how we deplored the begging attitude adopted before the tour; how we suggested ways and means of putting the whole thing on a paying basis. Well, now you know just how valuable our suggestions proved. The P.G.A. went on with their begging. They appealed to all the clubs; they started that iniquitous " bob-a-nob " stunt. People should be prohibited by law from asking for shillings; they always get them!
If you want to know where that £1,030 profit came from. look in the glass. It was your bob that did it—and mine.
And they'll do it again. But still it is all wrong.