Posts filed under 'sport'
October 20th, 2007
Following on from my last entry I’ve been thinking about why we invest so much energy and emotion in sports and games. Whether it be as a player or a spectator, for a national team or a local league, we pour vast amounts of money and effort into activities which can often be easily made fun of by those who are less enthusiastic. Try objectively describing golf to a Martian!
While there is clearly some element of tribal, regional, or national fervour involved in some cases, there is also a deeper need being met. That need is fairness.
Humans crave fairness. Our philosophies are built on it, our religions declare it, our political theories profess it, and yet in practice in the real world it doesn’t exist. Whether the cause is natural chance; climate, water supply, famine or flood – or man-made; war, poverty, discrimination or persecution – there are plenty of reasons to declare that life isn’t fair.
Sport gives us that chance of fairness; a closed system with rules that all players must abide by in order to achieve success – that awful cliché, a level playing field. It gives us the feeling that there is a chance that our efforts will be fairly rewarded, that if we put in more effort, demonstrate more skill, that we can win.
That is why we care so much when the rules are broken; when a foul goes unpunished, when a referee makes a mistake and chalks off a goal or a try or an ace. We rail against unfairness in this, our one hope of a fair chance.
In some degree we can even measure a sport’s likely popularity with players and spectators by how intrinsically fair it is. Snooker is perhaps the perfect example of a literally level playing field – it is almost pure skill with only the occasional fluke spicing up the mix. Football scores high because while there are advantages being tall and strong there are also advantages in being small and nimble. Basketball, though wildly popular in some countries has never really taken off in the UK in a big way, and one reason must be that it is a sport exclusively for tall people. One of rugby’s problems now is the emphasis on sheer bulk – it is no longer possible to have a fair game between players of different sizes – more on this in the next blog posting.
Golf has a reputation as one of the most sporting of games and one of the fairest – apart from the chance bounce or gust of wind it is a fair context between 2 players or between a number of players and the course. It should be no surprise that it is popular. Indeed the strength of its fairness is shown by the very rare occasions when there is controversy – such as the unfortunate scenes of running onto the green in the Ryder Cup a few years ago when Olazabal still had a putt to take, or when a championship courses is tricked up by misguided administrators to make it “Tiger-proof” and they only succeed in reducing the number of possible winners.
Next time you go to play or spectate at your favourite game, consider how fair it is and which events raise the wrath of the crowd the most.
October 13th, 2007
The current fankle about Andy Murray’s comments on match fixing in tennis has once again raised the question of how reliable the results are in any of the sports we watch. Of course we have the usual expressions of outrage that anyone could suggest that their sport was anything other than pure as the driven snow – or in this case Tim Henman’s tennis whites. Anyone who actually believes this is as naive as the hapless administrator charged with saying it is pretending to be. Sport is big money,and where there’s money there’s corruption, especially where betting comes into the equation. Whether it’s the struggling players at the lower end who are tempted into involvement in low visibility betting scams such as Murray was referring to or high profile international players such as Hansie Cronje the former South African cricket captain, there are always those prepared to apply pressure to anyone who can turn a result. This could be in the form of enticements or threats or a combination of both; which makes the tennis authorities response of forcing any player approached to report it to them within 48 hours a dangerous one for the innocent players who have to live in such an environment. If someone tries to bribe you it may well be the safest response to simply refuse the offer and forget it happened. Otherwise if there is heavyweight mafia-style involvement you may find the consequences of reporting it unpleasant. And of course do you really know who you can trust? Imagine a young batsman emerging into that South African side being approached and going to his captain for advice!
Meanwhile we’ve also had the Marion Jones drug affair in athletics and that is a sport in serious trouble. Only someone with their head deeply immersed in the seaside stuff can have any belief in the credibility of any results in any major event. You simply don’t know who is on drugs and who, if anyone, isn’t. Though a look at physique and running style can give you a suspicion. So far the glamour of the Olympics has shielded the sport to some degree but the number of drug cases bring revealed will inevitably lead to a point where no-one bothers to watch any more. And when that happens the TV companies and major sponsors will get out faster than any sprinter. If I were organising the London Olympics I’d be getting worried about now.
October 8th, 2007
Disappointment at the loss to Argentina in the quarter-finals when the opportunity to really make an impact had been opened by the shock eliminations of the All Blacks and Australia.
More disappointing though was the lack of spark for most of the match. The forwards fought determindly in a mostly defensive role but there seemed to be something missing. I suspect it was another example of bringing back key players too soon after injury; something we see a lot in modern sport but which seldom works (think Beckham, Owen, Flintoff). At least three of our middle five have had serious injuries in the last few months and none of them have got back to the form they had showed previously. Jason White had been an inspirational figure both as player and captain but had had no real opportunity to play himself back into sharpness following a long spell out. Along with Ally Hogg and Mike Blair he was a shadow of his former self and we badly missed their rumbustious attacking around the fringes. Too often sports teams seem to regard one man as crucial and rush him back assuming his class will tell when he has no chance of being match fit. Often all that happens is the player concerned loses confidence because he’s trying to do things that he’s not yet ready for. Stephen Gerrard seems to be suffering that problem for Liverpool since he was played for England when injured.
Returning to the Scotland rugby team, our backs continue to appear somewhat one paced and we badly need someone with some flaring acceleration to provide a it of real penetration. While the Lamonts had some good runs the midfield seldom seem to explode onto the ball the way the New Zealanders do and too often they seem to look for the defence rather than trust to pace to cause that defence problems. Defences that have time to line up their targets will always win but if you run at them while they are still adjusting then chances can be made. Oh for the pace of a David Johnston. Sadly it seems that in the modern players are getting so bulked up that David would never get into the team now. The TV commentators were criticising Paterson for being too light! It’s hard to imagine Johnston’s classic outside arc try against Wales in that 5-try match in Cardiff happening now and that’s a great shame.
Ah well, perhaps by the 6 Nations our injured players will have come back into form and with Wales and Ireland seemingly in disarray maybe we can hope for a successful season.
October 1st, 2007
I was stunned to hear today of the death from a brain tumour of Bruce Hay, one of the finest rugby players I ever saw. Bruce was the Boroughmuir full back when I was in my last year at school and I saw him play many times for club and country. I can only remember two players who could consistently make a crowd audibly draw breath in awe by making a tackle – one was JPR Williams, the other was Bruce Hay.
When he first toured New Zealand with Scotland the Kiwis were very impressed. They said that there was no harder, more correct, or more fair tackler in their country, which must be about the biggest compliment they could pay anyone. He broke his arm in his first test against them, but gained revenge by scoring a try when they came to Murrayfield in a drawn match and again in his final international.
He was unlucky to be playing at the same time as Andy Irvine, and because of that he only won 23 Scotland caps. But he went on two Lions tours and played in three tests as well as captaining the side in a number of games. The press tended to unfairly contrast his hard-tackling defensive abilities with the brilliant but sometimes mercurial attacking talents of Irvine, but in fact he was very much an attacking full back as anyone at the attack-minded Boroughmuir club could tell you. He was part of the superb team which won the final unofficial club championship in 1973 and he won a Melrose sevens medal in 1976.
Solid as a rock under the high ball and a fine line kicker he was also a strong runner with a very useful break, and fast enough to handle the most celebrated of opposition winger, though on one occasion after he’d scored an interception try against Ireland, outrunning the covering Tony Ward while playing on the left wing, Jim Renwick quipped that it was like watching the live action and the slow motion replay at the same time! Hay laughed as much as anyone, because he was an honest-hearted and thoroughly likeable man who gave his all and was admired by everyone in the game.
He will be missed by everyone in Scottish rugby. But for anyone who saw him thundering into the tackle or surging into the three-quarter line at speed the memory will last long in the mind’s eye. A true legend.
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