The press found much to disturb them a while ago, when the Billiards Control Club issued its regulations to govern the entry to the Open Amateur Championship. Of course, the press made a mountain out of a molehill, apart from the fact that they carefully took hold of the wrong end of the stick in relation to the Billiards Control Club's decision.
This failure on the part of the general press to get the correct focus on any question connected with sport is curious and worthy of comment (so long as you keep the comment to yourself).
It happened this way. The Executive Council of the B.C.C. which body is the M.C.C. of Billiards, found it necessary to lay down some hard and fast rules with reference to the status of the amateur, and his right to enter for the Open Amateur Championship, which is controlled by the B.C.C.
The secretary of the Billiards Control Club is Mr. G. H. Nelson, a gentleman who has done, and is doing at the present time, more for the good of the game of billiards than anyone in this country. He has certain definite ideas with regard to what constitutes an amateur, and. what is more to the point, he appears to have an Executive Council who are prepared to back him up in his fight to purify the ranks of amateur billiard players. The press, both in an editorial capacity, and in its correspondence columns, showed its complete inability to appreciate the true inwardness of the rules laid down by the Billiards Control Club to govern the entry for the 1913 Open Amateur Championship.
They lent their columns, and the weight of their authority, to sweeping and absurd statements, to the effect that the new regulations excluded the directors of brewery companies, the heads of such businesses as Gamage's, and all sorts of noble lords, who are, in some remote way, connected with business. The scare lasted for a day or two, and then it died—because something else turned up.
Now let us look a little more sensibly at the matter, and see if we cannot gather the true effect of the B.C.C. ruling on this question of amateur sport. There is generally an excellent theoretical basis on which to found any practical reform. Such is the case in this instance.
The idea possessed by the secretary and the Executive Council of the Billiards Control Club—though the idea may, in the eyes of a few, appear erroneous—is that an amateur is a man who plays the game of billiards for the sole and absolute reason that he finds it an excellent recreation by which he can beguile a weary hour. It is held that a true amateur, and one open to compete in the Amateur Championship, is a man who regards the game as a sport, and not as a means to an end. That some amateurs are better players than others is only for the good of the game, though en passant, it may be remarked that some of the finest amateur players in this country have never appeared in public. I believe the Billiards Control Club is absolutely correct in its ruling, and so it behoves us to discover where the noise comes from.
The section of the competitors it hits most badly are the licensed victuallers, who, for some reason or other, have shown up rather strongly in some recent championships.
But surely they have no need to complain, for they have a championship of their own, from which they exclude the ordinary amateur and professional. This sounds as though I am making a distinction between the amateur, the professional and those excluded from the Amateur Championship.
There is such a distinction, for those barred from the Amateur Championship might be termed "Trade Amateurs."
Without a doubt they play the game as a sport, but there is always something depending on the result of any tournament they may enter for, apart from the honour and glory of winning. They receive no money, and, therefore, they are amateurs in this respect.
But it would be absurd to consider that these "Trade Amateurs" do not derive some benefit from their victories.
The owner of a licensed house must receive benefit in the way of an increased custom, if he is successful in a big billiards competition, in the same way that a member of a firm of billiard table makers cannot help making some capital out of the fact that he has won a championship.
The attitude adopted by the press was not only wrong, but hopelessly misleading. Rule 3 governing the question of ineligibility reads: "Anyone holding a post as manager, salesman, clerk, or is working in any capacity in the office or factory of any billiard table manufacturer or supplier of billiard goods."
There can be no doubt as to the justice of such a rule, and though the addition of the word "only" at the end would have made the rule more clear and definite, it is rather difficult to see how it can be misread, or how it can be made to show that Mr. A. W. Gamage is ineligible.
The Executive Council of the Billiards Control Club has plenty of information regarding the use made by certain amateurs of their amateur status, and if the press will only take the trouble to go and consult Mr. G. H. Nelson on the matter I venture to think he could open their eyes.