Dialogue: When making money is the epitome of endeavour

By JOHN MCCRYSTAL*

Noticing a decline in the number of citizens attending the democratic assembly to exercise their voting privileges, a measure was introduced by the Athenian senate in the 4th century BC granting a sum of money in return for attendance.

This scandalised many, including the playwright Aristophanes, who regarded the move as the worst example of the corruption of a corrupt age. If payment were offered in return for casting a vote, these people reasoned, a disproportionate number of self-interested people would become involved, and self-interested people were incapable of voting in the interests of the whole community.

There were some things, they argued, which just should not be mixed with money. Politics was one.

There are still some people who believe that sport is another. When it was first proposed that rugby should go professional, New Zealanders engaged in a series of arguments which recalled those ancient Athenian squabbles.

Playing rugby was an end in itself, we protested, and a noble one at that. The desire to play rugby well was a lofty ambition, all the more exalted because rugby is a team sport. And it was no exaggeration to say that at its highest level the All Blacks' fortunes coincided with the national interest.

A player's sole reward in the good old days was kudos, which he received with a mien of fiercely stoical nonchalance. See? We even littered our arguments with the Greek vocabulary of virtue, vice and corruption.

Professional sportsmen, on the other hand, did it for money. They ran onto the field like workers resigned to another day at the office. Their sole loyalty, we cried, beyond their bank balance, was to their employer, and their employer's sole loyalty was to the sponsor.

Professional rugby, we feared, would become a commodified parody of the game played for its own sake by men who loved it. The passion of the amateur would be replaced by the unspectacular competence of the professional. And, worse, we worried that even a player's love for his country would be eclipsed in the professional arena by his love for himself.

Then it came true. Who apart from the most professional of spectators didn't feel betrayed when John Gallagher, hero of the All Blacks' World Cup victory, announced he was switching to that most venal of games, rugby league? Or when our leading halfback, Graeme Bachop, went to Japan to play rugby for money?

Or when Chris Dickson decided he would sail for Japan rather than New Zealand, because Japan was the highest bidder? And who didn't mutter "Et tu, Coutts," with tears in their eyes when the news about him and Brad Butterworth broke?

This sense of betrayal is the most surprising thing of all, and is a testimony to the efficiency of Team New Zealand's marketing. They had us believing they were sailing that black boat for us, for New Zealand, for New Zealanders, rather than for the family of five sponsors.

For a little while we forgot that these were professional sportsmen doing their best to make sure that their floating billboard spent more time on television than their rivals'. We forgot that the red socks we pulled on didn't make anything go faster except, perhaps, the torrent of New Zealand dollars flowing into the coffers of the Korean sweatshop that made them.

All the while, as the television advertisement showed heartland New Zealanders puffing furiously to lift our boat out of a hole, the reality was that the patriotic pitch was just that - puffery.

But on what grounds can we criticise professional sportsmen for deciding to further their careers, any more than we can criticise the 150 junior doctors who are rumoured to be leaving our hospitals for the greener pastures of Australia? In these individualistic, materialistic times, surely no one can criticise anyone else for trying to get ahead.

The loss of Coutts and Butterworth is merely another example of the brain drain which inevitably afflicts what gets called our intellectual capital, and what you might call the muscle rustle which depletes our sporting talent. For in the world of big-spending, media-hyped professional sport, no less than in the global economy, we are a poor nation. We can't afford our own top people.

All we can do is lament that they have listened and absorbed the message that making money is the sole and only end of human endeavour.

* John McCrystal is an Auckland freelance writer.


When making money is the epitome of endeavour


Noticing a decline in the number of citizens attending the democratic assembly to exercise their voting privileges, a measure was introduced by the Athenian senate in the 4th century BC granting a sum of money in return for attendance.

This scandalised many, including the playwright Aristophanes, who regarded the move as the worst example of the corruption of a corrupt age. If payment were offered in return for casting a vote, these people reasoned, a disproportionate number of self-interested people would become involved, and self-interested people were incapable of voting in the interests of the whole community.

There were some things, they argued, which just should not be mixed with money. Politics was one.

There are still some people who believe that sport is another. When it was first proposed that rugby should go professional, New Zealanders engaged in a series of arguments which recalled those ancient Athenian squabbles.

Playing rugby was an end in itself, we protested, and a noble one at that. The desire to play rugby well was a lofty ambition, all the more exalted because rugby is a team sport. And it was no exaggeration to say that at its highest level the All Blacks' fortunes coincided with the national interest.

A player's sole reward in the good old days was kudos, which he received with a mien of fiercely stoical nonchalance. See? We even littered our arguments with the Greek vocabulary of virtue, vice and corruption.

Professional sportsmen, on the other hand, did it for money. They ran onto the field like workers resigned to another day at the office. Their sole loyalty, we cried, beyond their bank balance, was to their employer, and their employer's sole loyalty was to the sponsor.

Professional rugby, we feared, would become a commodified parody of the game played for its own sake by men who loved it. The passion of the amateur would be replaced by the unspectacular competence of the professional. And, worse, we worried that even a player's love for his country would be eclipsed in the professional arena by his love for himself.

Then it came true. Who apart from the most professional of spectators didn't feel betrayed when John Gallagher, hero of the All Blacks' World Cup victory, announced he was switching to that most venal of games, rugby league? Or when our leading halfback, Graeme Bachop, went to Japan to play rugby for money?

Or when Chris Dickson decided he would sail for Japan rather than New Zealand, because Japan was the highest bidder? And who didn't mutter "Et tu, Coutts," with tears in their eyes when the news about him and Brad Butterworth broke?

This sense of betrayal is the most surprising thing of all, and is a testimony to the efficiency of Team New Zealand's marketing. They had us believing they were sailing that black boat for us, for New Zealand, for New Zealanders, rather than for the family of five sponsors.

For a little while we forgot that these were professional sportsmen doing their best to make sure that their floating billboard spent more time on television than their rivals'. We forgot that the red socks we pulled on didn't make anything go faster except, perhaps, the torrent of New Zealand dollars flowing into the coffers of the Korean sweatshop that made them.

All the while, as the television advertisement showed heartland New Zealanders puffing furiously to lift our boat out of a hole, the reality was that the patriotic pitch was just that - puffery.

But on what grounds can we criticise professional sportsmen for deciding to further their careers, any more than we can criticise the 150 junior doctors who are rumoured to be leaving our hospitals for the greener pastures of Australia? In these individualistic, materialistic times, surely no one can criticise anyone else for trying to get ahead.

The loss of Coutts and Butterworth is merely another example of the brain drain which inevitably afflicts what gets called our intellectual capital, and what you might call the muscle rustle which depletes our sporting talent. For in the world of big-spending, media-hyped professional sport, no less than in the global economy, we are a poor nation. We can't afford our own top people.

All we can do is lament that they have listened and absorbed the message that making money is the sole and only end of human endeavour.

* John McCrystal is an Auckland freelance writer.