ABSTRACT

The purpose of this section of the book is to compare the ideas about amateurism gained from the library, so to speak, with the personal testimony of people who had in some way or another operated in the borderlands of amateurism and professionalism or on both sides of the border at different times. Martin Roderick was keen to suggest that this testimony might add something different, not suspecting at the time of his suggestion that he would be one of the people whom I would seek to interview. The most obvious sources were Rugby Union and track and field athletics, both of which had made the transition as a whole, but cricket and golf have had their own distinctive ways of interpreting the relationship between professionalism and amateurism, and Association Football and American sport both proved richer sources than I would have imagined.