This sporting life

One of the lasting legacies of the 2012 Olympics was to get the great British public interested and enthused about sports other than Association Football.  There is no doubt that the Olympics raised the profile of cycling in the UK, which was already riding high after Wiggo had won the Tour de France, not just a tremendous sporting achievement but that achievement that the English cherish above all others – Beating The Foreign At Their Own Game. 

That’s why the news that the Big Departure for the 2014 Tour would be in Leeds was greeted with such enthusiasm, as Brits who for years had associated bicycles with spindly rickets-ridden grocery delivery boys toiling up northern cobbled hills or district nurses built like the figurehead of a tea clipper sailing magnificently through country lanes atop a noble iron steed would instead be treated once again to the thrill of the road race and a sporting event which, when watched live, whooshes past you in a few seconds, allowing the rest of the afternoon free for drinking and talking about pies.

When the Olympics were in progress, unfavourable comparisons were drawn between the overpriced nancy-boys who, the public slowly realised, had not won a major international competition in their living memory, and Team GB who all appeared to live with their mums, went to bed at four in the afternoon and were assembling a hoard of gold that would put a dragon to shame.

Once the Olympics ended and the soccer season started, the normal order quickly reasserted itself and soccer dominates the media once more.  Although it’s probably fair to say that this domination is not as total as it once was, as editors realise that if the BBC were able to dedicate whole channels to single sports, like canoeing, the least they can do is dispatch a hack to a riverside in spate in Wales to record the activities of a bloke in a fibreglass shell trying to paddle up a waterfall.  Dickie Davis was decades ahead of the game, there is a World of Sport out there, beyond even the seasonal favourites of soccer and rugby.

They used to say that soccer was a game for gentlemen played by thugs, and rugby was a game for thugs played by gentlemen.  That’s no longer true, it’s fairer to say that, professionally at least, soccer is a game played by foreigners whilst rugby is a game played by blokes who, if they are going to punch an opponent, at least have the courtesy to do it in front of the ref.

More than anything, soccer is a tribal thing.  For many fans, the order of preference is Club, Country, Bird.  And it’s played everywhere, all you need are two boys, each with a jumper and you have the set up for a goalie, a striker and some goalposts, in short, a game.  It’s more difficult to organise an impromptu game of rugby, where you need at least two public schools with a bitter rivalry.

And while it is very easy to knock soccer, let’s not forget in these tough economic times the role that soccer plays in stimulating the economy.  Clubs change the design of their strip seven or eight times a season, necessitating their fans to visit the club shop on a regular basis to enable them to dress like a fat version of their sporting heroes.  At a local level, the players themselves spend money in bars, clubs and restaurants in a quest to maintain goal-scoring fitness levels.  At an international level, with so many players now being so foreign that they have to hold their arms out straight not just to celebrate goals but to properly display their twenty-seven syllable surnames, they are sending home a portion of their wages and so re-floating the Euro.  And of course let’s not forget their contribution to certain professions, eminent QCs with a good record of getting their client off charges of racism or sexual assault in time for Saturday’s match do not come cheap.

In rugby, of course, the players at least have the courtesy to commit sexual assault right in front of the ref, usually in the scrum.

Match report

A colleague of mine one mentioned the surprising fact that she was a season ticket holder for Watford Football Club. Presumably, that means she has a designated seat that she always sits it, just like the others who sit around her and presumably that means that the chap who sits in front of her must be getting fairly fed up with hearing her favourite phrase to employ when Watford are underperforming: ‘Oi, Watford, it’s a good lot the other lot are shit too!’.

When, though, does our enthusiasm for sport take on that abusive edge? I’ve just come from my nephew’s little league game, where his team won three two after extra time. Now, I’ve been to little league games before but this was a cup final and, if it was decided on decibels, I would have been impossible to call between our coach and theirs – although I award extra points to their coach for the aggressive way he managed to scream ‘get up!’ every breath. This could refer to keeping the ball in the air, moving up the field or stop rolling on the floor blubbing and wanting your mum to stop the bleeding after a particularly nasty tackle.

I’ve attended various little league matches over the years, watching my nephews progress from basically bumbling tots chasing after a ball to morose teens who, on a Saturday morning, stop: growing, sprouting hair, producing acne or thinking about girls and divert all that energy (and that’s a LOT) into sprinting around a football pitch for ninety minutes like a ball-seeking missile made of elbows, knees and aggression. When the kids are young, every action is met with applause, even when the opposition score a goal. Because we ant them to learn sportsmanship.

Tonight was different, tonight when the opposition scored there was, from our side of the pitch (oh yes, it was like the Sharks and the Jets out there), polite applause. There’s a difference.

So I’m used to shouty coaches and screaming fathers trying to live out their dreams of footballing glory through their sons (or daughters), but tonight as a special treat we had a footie mum. A footie mum is just like a pushy mum, but louder. Think of the sort of woman with scary hair and glittery eyes who breeds show dogs, cross her with somebody who lives in a caravan with a satellite dish attached and who breeds dogs for illegal fights and you’re getting the picture.

Looking at the kids charging round that pitch and listening to a coach screaming ‘fame and glory!’, one does wonder if the kids are doing it for their benefit or our entertainment. It was certainly thrilling, if only because I know that there is no child so inconsolable as one who feels he has let down his team, himself and his coach and the fallout from defeat would be grim, but there was a little bit of guilt, like you always get when you see a kid performing, when you think ‘is this worth it? Look at them, there’s fear and anxiety and desperation but is there enjoyment…is this exploitation?’

Then the final whistle went and I thought ‘fuck it, we won, who cares?’. Then the kids sprayed lemonade like it was champagne. Which is ironic, because when I have the opportunity I drink champagne like it’s lemonade.

The Beautiful Sentiment

Why support a premiership football team? Certainly, if you like matching decorations then supporting Manchester United is fair enough, as a visit to their shop will outfit you with a themed duvet, lampshade, wallpaper, toothbrush holder and loo roll. The same can be said of Arsenal and Chelsea, with the added benefit that you can complete your collection of footie tat with a tattoo.

If you were born in the area and they are your team then fair enough, but it's something of a mystery why most of Manchester United's supporters don't live in a Manchester post code, they can't all have moved out of Manchester (although having visited Manchester, that's not a bad idea).

Maybe it's to be associated with success. If one had to support one's local team, simply by being in their catchment area, most supporters would spend their weekends shivering in rain-swept provincial footie grounds, risking food poisoning from the catering and trench foot from the stands, instead of watching Premiership football matches from the warm safety of the pub.

Misery. That's the usual reason you stick with a team. You watch one match where they should have won and that they lose and that's it, you've made an emotional investment and the next thing you know you're buying replica kit to wear at 3:00pm on a Saturday.

Which is what, perversely, has drawn me to take an interest in Aston Villa. They have followed the lead of FC Barcalona, who don't have a sponsor's name on their kit but rather sport the word UNICEF to raise awareness of that organisation and have the name of a local children's hospice, Acorns, instead.

This, I think, is tremendous. And imagine the edge it gives you over some tosser with the name of a paint company, arms dealer or airline on his chest.