Mahan's Ryder 'slave' comments reflect spread of greed in sport

Published on Friday 1 August 2008 23:53

AEMERICAN professional golfers are among sport's top earners. They don't even have to win many tournaments, let alone a major, to be earning a couple of million dollars a year – to say nothing of their income from endorsements.

The top players – Woods, Mickelson, Furyk & Co – do very much better of course. So complaints that they are not paid for representing their country in the Ryder Cup seem grotesque to most of us. Now Hunter Mahan, whom few this side of the Atlantic have ever heard of, but who lies 12th in this year's Ryder Cup points table, has taken the grousing a step further.

The players are "just slaves that week," he moans. Not only are they not paid, but they have to attend dinners every night – "not little dinners, but huge, massive dinners".

Shocking, isn't it? As for the stars like Woods and Mickelson, doesn't anyone realise, he says, that "their time is worth money?" One wouldn't have thought they were short of a buck, but the implication is that they ought to be paid for getting out of bed and turning up on the course. Pathetic, really.

"Greed for money is the root of all evil," as the old proverb has it, and certainly the corrupting influence of money is evident in sport today. Cricket is in real danger of being ruined by the vast sums being poured into the bastard 20/20 form of the game, which is a travesty of first-class cricket.

The full dire consequences of this may not be seen for some time. Already, however, one of the promises – that it will attract a new base of support – looks hollow. It's unlikely that this support will transfer to the traditional game, with its slower pace, subtlety, intelligence and the demand on concentration it makes.

Then look at rugby. Professionalism came in because the southern hemisphere countries were lured by the promise of riches from Rupert Murdoch's Sky television, and because they were losing players to professional rugby league. For ten years all was fine. But what's happening now?

More money has flooded into the club game in England and France, and New Zealand, Australia and South Africa are seeing their internationalists defect to French and English clubs.

Nice for England and France, you may say. But there is anxiety in France. Is the club game there going the way of football, with supremacy guaranteed for the richest clubs?

Everyone knows that only four clubs have a chance of winning England's football Premiership, just as in Scotland the contest to be top of the SPL is restricted to Rangers and Celtic.

Last week the French rugby newspaper, Midi-Olympique, put this question: can any of the smaller clubs possibly compete with Toulouse, Clermont-Auvergne and (perhaps) Stade Francais? Is the Top 14 destined to be a two, or three, horse race? Or can Toulon, bankrolled by a multi-millionaire, break into the charmed circle?

In England the Guinness Premiership remains more competitive, principally because of the agreement to impose a salary cap (even though there are doubts as to just how scrupulously this is observed). But can that hold? Or will money talk loudly and bullyingly there?

Here in Scotland things are different, principally because money has been in short supply.

Even so, the previously vibrant club game was severely damaged when, as a result of the advent of professionalism, some sixty of the best players were removed from it. Re-adjustment has been slow, and it's only in the last couple of seasons that the amateur – or largely amateur – game has come to terms with the changed circumstances, and shown signs of revival.

Football remains the team sport where money talks most brazenly. Half a century ago even the greatest footballers were indeed what Hunter Mahan says American Ryder Cup golfers are – slaves (though in the footballers' case wage-slaves) and not only for a week. There was a maximum wage, and players were effectively owned by their clubs. Some time in the Fifties, the Italian club Palermo approached the great Sir Tom Finney with an offer of the then astronomical sum of 10,000 to sign for them. He was called into the chairman's office at Deepdale and told bluntly, "it's not on, Tom. You belong to Preston North End and you stay here unless we want to get rid of you."

And that was that. Now of course players sign contracts which they have every intention of tearing up if somebody comes along with an offer of more money – as frequently happens. Well, it's the way of the world today, and there's no likelihood that this particular clock will be turned back. Money rules.

All the same it's nice that just occasionally top sportsmen (if that term isn't itself an anachronism) should perform without pay, representing their country for the honour of doing so. And when an American golfer says this makes "slaves" of them, no response but laughter and mockery is possible.