SOMETIME in the non-too-distant future, the Fort Sterling Bolton League is planning to hold what may well be the first of a short series of conferences to which all clubs will be invited to send representatives.

A suggested agenda consisting of the 10 most problematic areas faced by clubs and leagues has been drawn up and it is hoped that what the politicians refer to an 'frank and worthwhile' discussions may result in some alleviation of several, if not all of the points at issue.

One of the items on the proposed agenda concerns the desirability or otherwise of a possible move towards an 'open' league, in which clubs would register a list of cricketers, rather than 'amateurs' and a 'professional', the inference being that all or some, or none of these players may receive renumeration for their efforts.

It is just one alternative which springs readily to peoples' lips whenever the vexed question of illegal payments to amateurs is talked about around the grounds. In our own League the whole thing revolves around two rules; Rule 15, which defines the role of the professional and tells us that each club must have one and only one; and Rule 14c, which warns clubs as to what might happen if they are proved to have illegally attempted to have more!

The important word here, of course, is 'proved'. Before we go any further, let's get one thing straight. Illegal payments have been a fact of life in the Bolton League for years, almost certainly as far back as 1930.

During the last 20 or 30 years I have been offered oral evidence of such instances involving almost all of our clubs, all of which I am totally convinced to be true, and all of which would have been thrown out of a court of law within five minutes!

So what's to be done? I am personally against a totally open league. I think that the club professional, one of the great traditions of league cricket, still has a big part to play. To dispense with him would involve a lessening in standards and prestige, especially when one considers the roles played by those Test and first-class players whose cricket we have enjoyed over the years. There would be more practical problems, too, surrounding the rules of the various non-domestic competitions in which the League and its clubs play a part.

What I do question is the purpose and validity of Rule 14c, which has been in the League Handbook now for 50 years and more, in its various guises and for all of that time has been variously mocked, abused, derided and ignored.

What's the point of it? Why not simply dispense with it altogether, and allow clubs and their benefactors to continue what they have been doing for years anyway, but allow them the privilege of doing it openly and without all the attendant rumours, allegations and counter-allegations with which we are beset at the moment. At least the League would rid itself of that particular stigma. Already I can visualise "Disgusted of Bromley Cross' reaching for his pen and vitriol, but the question has to be addressed.

What, when you get down to it, it so very wrong with a person being paid for possessing and practising a particular expertise? After all, it happens in most other walks of life. The teacher earning a few extra pennies in private tuition; part-time footballers; musicians who earn in the evening when their regular work is done; even, heaven help us, retired schoolteachers writing cricket articles for the local press! Where can be no such thing as illegal payments if no law is being broken and, so far as I can see, a rescindment of Rule 14c need not necessitate any other change of rule.

I have never felt entirely comfortable with a rule containing the expression 'immediate expulsion from the League'. Better, surely, to have a club openly and legally paying a couple of its players rather than have it expelled from the League for doing something that has been going on since time immemorial anyway.

Strictly speaking, of course, for the purposes of our rules and records, the word 'amateur' would need to be re-defined in peoples' minds. It would simply apply to any of a club's players other than the registered and contracted professional. And the one great thing about all of this, if you think hard about it, is that absolutely nothing would change, except that the League would become a rather more honest organisation than it is at the present time.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.