And there goes the spirit of sportsmanship

ONE of the famous sayings of Bill Shankly, who was manager of Liverpool Football Club in the days when it won everything, went like this: 'Football is not a matter of life and death - it's much more important than that.' In the cold light of another day - indeed another decade - we may think this shows a lamentable sense of proportion. But there are several points you can make for Shankly. The first was that he might not have said it. Shankly was one of those personalities around whom legends clustered. If he said it, he was probably joking: he had a nice line in dry Caledonian wit. And if he did mean it, well, Shankly was a paid worker in a most precarious profession. Perhaps a successful football manager needs a skewed sense of proportion. Still, we can imagine his ghost smiling benignly down on Timothy Fok Tsun-ting, who engaged in some interesting oratory last Tuesday. Mr Fok is the recently elected chairman of the Amateur Sports Federation and Olympic Committee, or ASF and OC. Someone once described a camel as a horse designed by a committee. The ASF and OC is a committee designed by a horse. Nevertheless, for many years it provided a satisfactory steed for the wiry frame and Olympian - I beg your pardon, Olympic - personality of A de O Sales. One of the jobs of this committee's chairman is traditionally to remind local sportspersons at every possible opportunity of their abject dependence on his benevolence and generosity. So Mr Fok was well within his job description in taking the opportunity to warn people wishing to go to the Asian Games that there would be more applicants than places, and his committee would generally frown on those who had no chance of doing well. This is a reasonable way of distributing scarce funds, and if that were all that was said the matter would be of no interest to mere spectators. However, there is such a thing as tact, and Mr Fok went on to suggest that he does not suffer from an excess of it. 'The time for the Olympic spirit of participation is over,' he said, adding later that 'the days of amateurism are over'. Having sorted this small detail out, we can now dedicate ourselves to the new non-amateur, non-Olympic spirit of things, which goes like this: 'They must go there with the sole purpose of winning.' NOW the ASF and OC is an autonomous body, and it would be presumptuous of me to suggest that it might at this point usefully change its name to the Professional Sport and Win-at-all-costs Committee to reflect the new realities. But further in Mr Fok's remarks came this little jewel: 'Money would not be an obstacle because the major part of the funding would come from the Government.' And this raises an important question: if Mr Fok is right in his depiction of the present sporting realities, why should the taxpayers be funding this sordid activity? After all, there are two justifications for government funding of sport. One is that such activity is good for the personalities of the participants, that they pick up some set of values associated with the notion of sportsmanship, that in the words of Kipling they learn to: . . . force your heart and nerve and sinew, To serve their turn long after they are gone while at the same time picking up the ability to . . . meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two imposters just the same. Well, goodbye to all that. The other is that by encouraging mass participation in sport the Government will foster the physical fitness of the population. This goal is probably not best served by allowing a few elite performers to give up real work and become full-time professionals at our expense. There is nothing wrong with people wishing to be professional athletes. But they should not be a charge on the public purse. They have other options. They can look for wealthy patrons, paying spectators, television contracts or a benevolent cigarette company. Note to COSH, PSS, ASH and other well-intentioned acronyms: that last remark was a joke. Perhaps the whole thing was a joke. Perhaps Mr Fok thought he was at a football party. But here is a chilling thought for you. Having told our party at the Asian Games that they have the 'sole purpose of winning', what do we say to anyone who is caught cheating - or who cheats but is not caught? Well done?