We are thrilled to have New Zealand’s leading sports journalist Phil Gifford as the writer of our lead article this season. In a stellar career Phil has seventeen book titles to his credit, won multiple radio awards but the recognition of an ONZM in the 2024 New Year honours will come as a personal highlight. The sporting fraternity, the length of the country, salutes you Phil.
Six decades reporting on sport hasn’t made me cynical or jealous. I have no issue with, for example, Kiwi Daryl Mitchell being auctioned in Dubai to Indian cricket sides, and emerging with a $2.69 million pay packet for about two months of play in the IPL.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I feel some nostalgia for the days of my childhood when if you were in Lyttelton you could have your accounts done by an All Black captain, Bob Duff, or be taught at Christchurch Boys’ High by another, Pat Vincent, or buy your curtain fabric from a shop in Dominion Road in Auckland, and be served by the owner, an Olympic 5,000 metres champion, Murray Halberg,
The golden days of amateur sport were once summed up for me by a great All Black hooker, Dennis Young, a key man in Canterbury’s 1953–56 Ranfurly Shield era. “In those times we really were the players of the people,” he told me in 2004. “We all had jobs. I was a cabinetmaker. It wasn’t a manufactured relationship between the players and the public. I’m not being critical, but with professional rugby now you have to manufacture times and situations for the public to have some contact with the players. This was the real thing. You were out there, listening to everything that people had to say about you. I’d go to play in a club game and my boss at work would be on the bank yelling out, ‘rattle your dags.’ On the Monday he’d ask if I’d heard him. I certainly did”.
“For a game we’d go straight from home to the ground. At no stage did we go to a hotel the night before. A few times we met for lunch at a hotel, but that was it.”
In the streams of people coming down Ferry Road, or jostling into Stevens Street to get to Lancaster Park, some would be carrying small kitbags. They were the players. There was no inching into the park on a bus, stopping at a guarded gate, and vanishing into the depths of the stand.
Instead there were two strands. One group in overcoats and hats headed towards the bank, or the stands. The men with the bags, containing boots, a towel and a jockstrap, were the players. “We’d emerge out of the crowd,” says Young, “where there were people saying, ‘how do you think you’ll go?’ and ‘good luck’ as you headed into the park.”
The great beauty of amateur sport, and why I’ll forever applaud the men and women who devote their time, energy and kindness to it, is not only the sheer pleasure it gives even casual competitors, but also the way it can give so many kids the chance to express themselves, to find hidden strengths and talents, and to display their character in a way they may not have found possible in a classroom.
A perfect example of hidden depths emerging through sport was provided by Dame Yvette Corlett, who won a gold medal in the long jump at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. As Yvette Williams, she was a shy Dunedin woman who as a teenager had to hide the fact from her mother that as well as being the Otago long jump champion, she had also won the shot put title. Her mother thought the shot was unladylike.
Her first competition overseas was at the Olympics in ’52. Interviewing her in 1977, she was almost embarrassed when I asked her how she dealt with competing in front of 40,000 people packed into the Olympic Stadium. “It’s a funny thing,” she said, “but I wasn’t nervous. In fact I loved being in front of so many people. The crowd didn’t make me feel intimidated. Instead I actually felt uplifted”. When she went on break the world long jump record in 1954, she was happy for the crowd in Gisborne to be allowed onto the ground, to line each side of her run to the long jump pit.
Why I believe every shivering Saturday morning at a netball court cheering on primary schoolchildren, or a sunny Sunday afternoon at a cricket ground, applauding as a teenager makes a diving catch in the slips, is so worthwhile, is that sport at the amateur level can give so much to everyone involved.
I’m thinking about the life lessons that can be provided on a grassy field, an all weather asphalt court, or an indoor basketball court.
When your livelihood doesn’t depend on it, sport can often demonstrate that as overblown as the words of Rudyard Kipling, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat these two imposters just the same” can feel, there’s a huge element of truth in them.
Sport offers a chance to learn how to control tempers, to find energy you didn’t know you had, to accept reverses, and, what may be the most valuable thing of all, to discover the pleasures of shared effort.
It’s a well established military technique that to bond a group, having to endure hardship together is highly effective. Whether it’s track and field athletes training as a squad, cricketers working together in the nets, or a rugby team enduring a session of gut busting sprints, friendships formed when sweat’s pouring and muscles are aching, have a remarkable power to endure.
Professional sport is an inevitable consequence of massive television contracts, and the discovery by companies that association with sport is a commercial bonus.
But while I’m not remotely advocating a return to the days when the English played an annual Gentlemen (amateur players) versus Players (professionals) cricket match at Lord’s, which somehow lasted until 1963, I devoutly hope that amateur sport holds to its values, and doesn’t just become a conduit for the most talented to make a living playing a game.
It won’t be easy as the 21st century runs on. But losing the delights of playing for the fun of it would be a blow for everyone, from kids starting out in cricket, or football, or netball, to adults changing ends on a bowling green.