Can Money Ruin Things?

 

I now live in Singapore where money or rather the lack of it, seems to be the cause of just about everything. One of the most politically sensitive issues is the official correlation between money and intelligence. For years, we have been told that it is essential for us to have the world’s best paid politicians because we need to be able to attract the world’s best people to do the very important job of running the country. A former Prime Minister even went as far as to talk about “sub-par” people earning less than half a million bucks a year.

Leaving aside the debate on political salaries, many of us understand that talent should be well rewarded. Although salary is not everything, it often plays an important part in life and human resource departments are well aware that the “star-performers” in any company need to be well compensated if the star performers are to stay with the organisation.

While I agree that talented people should be rewarded for putting their talents to good use, I do believe that money isn’t the “ONLY” thing when it comes to getting people to do well. This was often brought to me as was growing up in the UK, when I few people did remind me that there was a big difference between “Rugby Union” and “Football.” The difference was all about passion.

The English Premier League (EPL) is one of the most lucrative and even in the 1990s, the EPL paid some of the highest salaries in global football. Every footballer in the world wanted to play in the EPL. However, whilst the EPL was a hothouse of talent, the English national football team was, to put in charitably, rather lacking. Despite the talent and hype in the national squad, England’s national football team have perpetually disappointed. The national team’s fourth place in the 2018 World Cup was considered a best placing since 1990, when the national team also finished fourth. By comparison, in the same time frame of 1990 to 2018, England’s “Old Enemy” (Germany) has won the World Cup twice and to make matters worse, the other great rival of England for everything come out of nowhere to become World Champion twice (prior to 1998, France which was never known as a power in world football).

If England’s national squad had a habit of disappointing, English fans did not – that is if you consider being the most violent thugs a prominent world championship sport. If there was a group that should have been sent to the Chinese army for target practice in Tiananmen Square, it is the fans of the English national squad.

The inability of the national squad to win anything significant and the ability of the fans to cause havoc turn everywhere they went into a trash can, was a lot of money. One of the accusations against the national squad was the fact that the star players were inevitably more passionate about the clubs that paid their massive salaries than the country that gave them a bit of pocket money and supporters with a talent for embarrassment.

If the national football squad was a national embarrassment, England’s rugby squad by contrast, were a source of national pride. If England’s football squad considered it an achievement to reach the semi-finals twice in two decades, the English rugby squad have won their respective world cup and come in second twice in the same time frame. England’s rugby player shave proven that they can stand up to the world’s best (beating New Zealand, South Africa and Australia on a few occasions).

Then, there is the difference in the fans. If England’s football fans where prime candidates for a massacre, their rugby fans were, as a group decent and almost spiritual. Football songs are inevitably mindless. By contrast, the anthem is the “spiritual” – “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVsYJjaAvFI

 

 Rugby rivalries were inevitably a lot more civilised than their football counterparts. The great rival to the English in rugby is the Welsh whose fans had a wonderfully spiritual anthem, called “Bread of Heaven.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0JDYOA4Ofg

 

 While rugby does generate money, what is generated is nowhere near what is generated in football. Rugby stars earn hundreds of thousands, whilst football stars earn in the millions. Yet, despite the earning less, rugby has managed to stay civilised. Sure, nationalism comes to the fore in international tournaments as it does in football, but it has never boiled down to the nasty level.

So, is there such a thing known as too much money, where people care more about money than the actual game itself. Hence, players who worry more about the club than the country and promoters who bring out the nasty in people to get them riled up to an extent that they’re easy to make money from? The difference between English football and English rugby might suggest that there is a case for this.