A matter of honour

Clare Balding13 April 2012

On Tuesday night I was one of over 700 people who attended a charity dinner at the Caf? Royal in London. The full England rugby squad were also there, honouring a commitment made by their manager Clive Woodward (at least they granted him that) and out of respect to the man on whose behalf £183,000 was raised - Alastair Hignell.

Hignell is a former England rugby international and Gloucestershire county cricketer who was one of the great all-round sportsmen of his generation.

These days, at the age of 45, he is finding movement of any kind increasingly difficult as the effects of multiple sclerosis take hold. Hignell was embarrassed by the huge support he received from friends, colleagues (he is now a rugby commentator for BBC Radio) and sports stars, but he should not have been the one who was blushing.

The England rugby squad deserve some credit for turning up on a night when they had other things on their minds, but equally, the evening's events should have made them fully aware that threatening to strike over how much you get paid to represent your country becomes irrelevant when facing the prospect of never playing again.

Hignell belonged to the truly amateur era when you played for the thrill of the game, the pride in your shirt and enjoyed a few too many beers in the pub afterwards.

Things have changed beyond all recognition, as is only to be expected in the light of the huge investments being made in sport, but there still remains at the very core of sport the belief that you play because you love it and not because you are paid to do so.

If being a rugby player, a cricketer or a footballer were just about the size of the wage you pick up at the end of the week, then a career as such would hold no more or less attraction than a lawyer, a stockbroker or management consultant.

All require skill, dedication and application, but you don't see many lawyers basking in the adulation of 60,000 cheering fans and you won't come across many stockbrokers who can regard their time in the gym as part of their paid labour.

There is still a hugely romantic aura about the life of a sportsman that keeps children in schools dreaming that if only they can kick, catch or pass a ball better than anyone else, they too can enjoy an element of hero worship.

With that hero worship now come designer clothes, designer house and designer car, all of which are very attractive, but should not be more so than the thrill of pulling on an England shirt - they should be the bonus, not the basic.

Talking of which, the core of the row between the England rugby players and the RFU rested on the split between basic match fee and win bonus with the players initially rejecting a 60-40 split.

Having put his own job on the line to support his players (and having stood by individuals such as Lawrence Dallaglio in the wake of drug allegations) Woodward was outraged that they should find this an unacceptable arrangement.

The players left Tuesday's dinner twice to continue their negotiations, but the frostiness between Woodward and captain Martin Johnson, in particular, was chilly verging on freezing.

Woodward has shown a steel in recent days that has always been there, under the surface, but is now more evident than ever before. He will take a long time to forgive his players and I, for one, would not like to be at the training sessions leading up to Saturday's match against Argentina.

If you lose sight of why you play the game, you lose sight of the game itself and although I sympathise with the players' frustration that they have not been treated as adults in a game that seems to have gone professional from the bottom up rather than from the top down, they made a serious error of judgment in calling a strike.

For God's sake, strikes are for people who are underpaid and overworked, they are the last resort for those that have nowhere else to turn and no other means of getting public attention and support behind their cause.

Strikes are not for sportsmen representing their country at the very highest level of their game.

Why I fear betting revolution looks like trouble

It's a huge decision for the future of the sport at every level. More money will mean better facilities, better prize money, better paid staff, better promotion and, hopefully, better quality racing. There is much optimism this is the start of a golden era for the sport. Angus Crichton-Miller, the chairman of the Racecourse Association, declared: "I think this century is going to see racing chasing and ultimately overtaking soccer as the really popular sport of this country." He added, wryly, he had given himself plenty of time to fulfil the prophecy, but it is still a bold prediction.

The major advantage football has over racing is that it demands team loyalty which does not depend upon a financial investment, i.e a bet, but on personal preference.

Following football is about more than enjoying the skill of the players on the pitch or working out who will win a match - it evokes pride, delight, despair and anger.

Racing is a beautiful sport that depends on the bravest and most skilful participants in the animal world (the jockeys don't do too badly either), but it only rarely arouses passion among the unaffiliated. On the occasions it does, such as Young Kenny's win under top weight on Saturday, you can see what Crichton-Miller means, but how often does a horse come along who can keep performing at the top level for long enough to gather a mass following?

The Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Looks Like Trouble promised much, but having triumphed at Down Royal, he is now out for the season with a tendon injury.

Injuries happen frequently over jumps and flat racing is not immune to the truncated career as Dubai Millennium showed.

Others, like Sindaar, are retired early through choice rather than injury, after only a year at the top. It is not long enough to build a fan base for those that should be the heroes: the horses.

The jockeys and trainers are too busy to bother with marketing themselves to the level that would be required for even a lower league football club and, apart from Frankie Dettori, could walk into any supermarket unknown.

Most of them ride horses because they want to win races, not because they want to be famous and that is an admirable attitude. In terms of mass reach, that leaves betting, which will become more present in our homes through interactive television gambling. The National Lottery may have changed the public's view to the weekly flutter, but they should not be kidded into thinking they can dabble in betting with the same carefree attitude.

Choosing six numbers requires the skill of being able to cross off boxes on a piece of card - even Anthea Turner can do it - but backing racehorses demands a large element of understanding.

Even then you can be horribly wrong. I hope the racecourses do not allow the promised riches of interactive betting to cloud their vision of racing in the 21st Century, otherwise we will be no more than a Stock Market for the idle sports fan and there isn't a lot of fun or romance in that.

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