by John Clements
In most sports or pastimes the history of achievement within each sport is carefully documented. The number of individual international appearances each player achieves for his country, the number of wickets taken, centuries made or goals scored are widely known. In golf, the number of major titles won and the amount of prize money earned are all collated by each organising body. In pigeons we don’t do this. We don’t do records so we have no time for records and no idea what the RPRA thinks or what pigeon qualities the British value. We do have annual RPRA awards but these are not recorded or at least, as far as I know, not collated by year or years so we do not know which fancier has won the most or for that matter who has the record number and from what distance.
As an outsider looking in, these awards do not seem to be objective – objectivity is not a criteria that is sought. These awards appear to be subjective awards as a sideline or tradition going back to the distant past as much as anything else. They are granted first by the local region and then by the RPRA Council based on the opinion of someone but by who or whom is not known nor what qualifications they have for doing the job. Perhaps that is why we are not expected to look very closely at them.
Perhaps also the reason may be because objectivity is difficult (due to varying circumstances) in pigeons. The RPRA have thought these difficulties make it impossible so they don’t do it and as yet do not have plans to revise the system. That may be the reason but because of this lack of objectivity and measurement it brings decline. We cannot say for certain if sprint racing is changing the sport or what effect this has. We cannot say, because we don’t measure such things. We do not know how the sport is changing and whether this change is a good thing for morale or a bad thing that undermines confidence.
What we can say is that the RPRA have in the past purchased both a weekly magazine and a monthly magazine. The weekly magazine still publishes but the monthly magazine is no more. There is a probably a reason for this and the reason may be because the publication side of the RPRA was not designed to reinforce pigeon qualities or to collate records. Most other publications in most other sports engage themselves in sporting records – in our case (the pigeon sport) the top sporting organisations have to pay to publish their results.
Did the RPRA forsee when they bought their weekly publication, that it would change the nature of the sport from one whose reason was to improve the navigation and homing ability of the pigeon to one that existed for the sale of pigeons and lived by advertising them? The raw material (the pigeon) incidentally often happens not to be British pigeons but imported pigeons from abroad. Its magazine provides a platform for those who seek to earn a living acting as agents for other countries by choosing to import their pigeons into the UK to re-sell to British fanciers.
The RPRA thought they were doing a good thing when they bought the BHW but the unforeseen consequence was a decline of morale within the sport. We can’t go on expecting the British fancier to keep buying in order to boost the coffers of those who are not really interested in British pigeons or what happens to the British sport. I know we are fiercely competitive against each other but this cannot and should not continue unless we also become fiercely competitive as a pigeon country against other pigeon countries.
February 2013
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