When the ground is secured, the next thing for the secretary (to whom, as a rule, all preliminary arrangements are entrusted) is to get the entries. This for club meetings is often not so easy as it would appear. For the purpose of attracting a good 'gate,' a Saturday afternoon or a public holiday is the favourite day for sports, and in the season the athlete has so many meetings to pick and choose from that something attractive is required to entice him. The usual enticement, we regret to say, is the best and most valuable prize which the finances of the club can stand and which the rules of the A.A.A. allow. Some years ago the A.A.A. stepped in to try and put a stop to pot-hunting, and limited the value of prizes which can be given in handicaps to 10l. 10s., a sum which in our opinion is much more than is sufficient. At the present day, however, prize-getting is so much a business with the amateur athlete that the charge of 'pot-hunting,' which a dozen years ago was considered discreditable, has now practically ceased to be a reproach at all with the sporting community, which reads with avidity notices in the paper that Mr. A. or Mr. B. has won 60l. worth of prizes 'during the past week.' At the present day secretaries are glad enough to get the entries of men who really keep the prizes they win and do not, under the mask of amateurism, earn a living by selling their winnings.

But our business at present is with the competitors as they are, and not with competitors as they should be, and we hasten to admit that there are still a few just men in Gomorrah.

Partly, however, to keep out the semi-amateur class, and partly to give the handicappers every opportunity of adjusting the starts fairly, every competitor is compelled to send in his entry for a meeting upon a regulation 'entry form.' By filling up and signing this he pledges himself to the assertion that he is an amateur within the meaning of the A.A.A. definition, which is printed on the paper, and he also gives an account of his last three performances in public, stating the amount of his start and the result in each race. If any wilful misstatement is found on these entry forms, the committee of the A.A.A. punishes the offender by suspension or disqualification.

Entries are usually made to close a week before the day of the meeting, to allow the handicappers (for at a club meeting the majority of events are handicaps) a few days' leisure to allot the starts. As a rule, however, when the meeting is on a Saturday, entries are frequently received on Monday morning, a very reasonable practice, as men who have run well on one Saturday are often inclined to enter for a meeting on the next Saturday, and might be unable to do this if their entries for the next meeting were bound to be in by the Saturday evening. The regulation entrance fee for a handicap is half-a-crown, and one of the most useful regulations of the A.A.A. enjoins that no entry shall be accepted unless accompanied by the fee. Secretaries of sports being anxious, however, to get as good fields and as many half-crowns as possible, to help to defray the cost of the prizes, are continually infringing this regulation, and in consequence unpleasantness frequently results. Secretaries of clubs enter their members, or friends enter their friends, and now and again the man whose name is entered fails to put in an appearance, being dissatisfied with his start, or is wrongly handicapped with too great a start, owing to the handicapper not having sufficient information with the entry to be able to identify the runner or gauge his abilities.

In the first case, the absent runner now and then repudiates his liability for the fee; in the second case, if the runner turns up and wins the race the other competitors are loud in expressing their dissatisfaction. All this would be obviated if the secretaries would only do their duty and decline to take any notice of an entry not made upon a proper form and accompanied by the proper fee. In the long run we think this honest course would be the best policy, for if there is unpleasantness at a meeting one year the entries are sure to fall off at the next meeting promoted by the same club.

The secretary's duties before the meeting are by no means light; every competitor expects to see the starts published in the sporting papers a few days before the meeting, to have a programme and ticket of admission sent to him in due course, and the interests of the press have also to be studied. The press men expect interleaved programmes which will enable them to make their notes with more convenience, and a free right of admission to every part of the ground. With the old and capable representatives of the recognised papers this claim is no doubt a perfectly proper one, and clubs which want their meetings properly reported have no right to expect that this should be done unless they are willing themselves to afford facilities for the report. Sometimes, however, the representatives of papers which have very little concern with athletic meetings act in a way that is not above reproach. Knowing perhaps little or nothing of athletics, they freely criticise the decisions and proceedings of competent officials and stir up ill-feeling amongst athletes; and if by any chance they are not allowed in the centre of the ground, or are not treated with the amount of respect to which they deem themselves entitled, the readers of their paper are informed that the mismanagement of the meeting and the incompetence of the officials were outrageous.

Happily, we think, of later years this nuisance has somewhat abated, and another practice which threatened to become a greater nuisance, the providing of reporters with liberal refreshments, has also been pretty well discontinued. The 'chicken and champagne' method of dealing with critics cannot fail to be pernicious, in however humble a manner it is employed.

Another and most important duty of the secretary before the meeting commences is to provide proper accommodation for the competitors. If the sports be on a running ground which has regular dressing-rooms upon it this is easy enough; but at country meetings tents have to be erected, and a liberal supply of towels, baths, water, chairs, etc, provided, as nothing is more disagreeable for competitors than insufficient accommodation. Care must also be taken to see that all the implements and apparatus required for the meeting are ready. Upon one occasion an important meeting had to be put off for half an hour because there was no pistol upon the ground to start the race with; and often have we seen a similar pause in the programme because there was no worsted or tape for the winning-post, starts were not marked out, and no measure was handy, no bar for the jumping-posts, no ground set apart for the weightputting, and so forth. It need also scarcely be said that it is a grave offence for judges and officials to neglect their business, or to arrive late upon the ground.

We have already given in a previous chapter a sketch of an athletic meeting and its officials, and, whether the meeting be a championship or a small local affair, the same requisites and the same method of conducting it apply. It is rare nowadays to see an ill-conducted meeting, and the rapidity and smoothness with which a big fixture is got through in a few hours is often highly creditable to the organising and administrative ability of voluntary sporting associations. It is no uncommon thing for heats of sprinting handicaps to be run off with only three minutes between each heat, the clerks of the course getting their men out upon the ground to the very minute. One thing we can say with confidence is, that the rule - always rigidly enforced - for putting back a competitor who oversteps his mark before the pistol is fired has not only reduced sprint racing from chaos to order, but has rendered the work of starters and officials easier, and has largely tended to improve the management of meetings.

It would be, perhaps, unnecessary, after what we have written, to enlarge upon the right method of getting through a meeting, and we had better, perhaps, leave the following laws and rules for competitions to speak for themselves.