Tag Archives: Sport

At Last! Plus Some Thoughts on Sport

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I note that WP now has a speech bubble when i open it up. It points out that the reader has moved and is now denoted by eyeglasses. You can see why companies like this pay their CEOs such big money. Customer care, efficiency, planning – it takes a lot of money to hire someone who is prepared to stamp that out of an organisation. Sometimes I wonder how this sort of ineptitude can take hold and flourish.

Then there’s the Paralympics – the french were awarded the  games seven years ago and they cost €9 billion, but the triathletes and open water swimmers still have to swim in an open sewer. One of our athletes said, in the defence of Paris, that she wouldn’t want to swim in the Thames, which is a fair point, as we recently had a situation where the University Boat Race crews were told not to put their Cox in the river. However, when we hosted the Olympics we, sensibly, didn’t use the Thames.

Ram’s head at Southwell

I see Hannah Cockcroft has said that Paralympians should have the same amount of prize money as able-bodied athletes. World Athletics pays athletes £38,000 if they win gold. The rowers, swimmers, cyclists, divers, gymnasts and all the rest of our team get nothing for winning, apart from satisfaction and glory. And lottery funding, jobs and personal sponsorship. And in some cases, gold pillar boxes.

They used to do Olympic competitions in art, literature, music and architecture. It’s something they should do again, and include poetry.  It would be nice if I could be selected for the national team and have my living and coaching paid by Lottery funding. But then I’d be in quandary if I won – £38.000 or a gold pillar box?

One of the Lions outside the Council House.  They say the Right Lion roars when an honest politician walks past.  Enough said.

 

Thoughts on Sport and National Anthems

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I’ve just been reading an internet article on the singing of National Anthems by teams before international sporting events. This, it seems, was the reason for the United States Women’s team leaving the FIFA World Cup early.

I have news for all Americans here. It doesn’t matter. If you ever watch an English team at the start of am international match you will note that many of them don’t sing the National Anthem. That’s because most of us don’t know the words. And, in the case of football players, because some of the words have more than two syllables. We don’t I admit, win many big international competitions but the failure is down to arrogance, lack of preparation, money, tactical shortcomings and a plethora of other things, which all came into play during the rest of the article discussing the American women. At least they won four World Cups before the press turned on them, our men have only won one and our women haven’t won one yet.

The National Anthem isn’t a big thing in the UK, it’s just a dirge of a tune, with a history going back to, possibly, the 16th Century. It has had many verses and, like most things in the country, it fails to reflect the modern world. We are only allowed to sing two verses now, as dismissive references to foreigners and Scots are, due to modern sensibilities, not allowed. And, most importantly, it isn’t official, it just became the National Anthem because people sang it at times when other countries sang national anthems.

The American National Anthem has an interesting history too and was officially adopted in 1931 after many attempts. The music is by an Englishman. Interestingly, the music to another contender (My Country ’tis of Thee) is said to have music which is “identical to the music of God Save the King”. They can’t quite bring themselves to say that it is identical because it is the same music.

There are translations of the American National Anthem into many languages, including a French version for Americans of French descent (one of whom is amongst my readers) whereas we don’t bother with that sort of stuff in the UK, as we expect the rest of the world to learn English.

And there you go, a post that was going to discuss the evils of football and football journalism, turned out to be a post about National Anthems.

 

 

 

Sportswashing, Bribery and Beer

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I’ve just been reading about the decision by the Qatari government to ban the sale of alcohol in and around football stadia during the World Cup. I’m not really sure what the fuss is about. If you are going for the sport, you can enjoy football without beer. If you were going with the for the drinking, Qatar probably isn’t the best place for you anyway.

As I understand it from attending rugby matches at football grounds, the sale of alcohol is restricted in the UK, and you aren’t even allowed to have the tops of soft drinks bottles. You have to allow the bar staff to take them off and retain them in case you should throw it at the players. It doesn’t seem a big deal.

Anyway, unless I’m missing the point, their attitude to alcohol isn’t the worst thing about the Qatari government. If you really want to be picky you could make a list of other points that raise concerns, like slavery, migrant workers, women’s rights and LGBT rights.

FIFA, the players and the world in general, has muttered a bit but not really done anything much about anything. In that it follows general sporting practice. After all, several host countries of recent sporting events have questionable records on human rights. Of course, the biggest ethical question hanging over the current World Cup is whether it should ever have gone ahead, as the allegations of self-enrichment (so much nicer as a word than “bribery” isn’t it?) seem to indicate that greed, rather than the good of the game, was the guiding principle in awarding the World Cup.

If you have a few minutes, read this, it’s a statement on human rights and the various pronouncements of sporting bodies, many of whom seem to ignore their own guidelines in awarding their events to the highest bidders. If not, and I wouldn’t blame you for not reading it, take it from me, money talks louder than ethics.

At this point, I suppose I should mention golf, but this article covers it better than I could, so have a look (it’s a quick read). I hadn’t heard the term “sportswashing” before.

That’s about it for the sporting part of the discussion. I will go on to Part 2 tomorrow and discuss a few other issues.

For now, I will leave you with a thought. Andy Murray. Works hard, wins things, does this. Perhaps we should show pictures of him to our football team so they can see what a proper sporting hero looks like.

I don’t have any pictures that relate to sport or ethics, so you’ll have to make do with some swans

Mute Swan

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PW Crigglestone

Day 211

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Despite my dislike of most modern sport, I have been drawn to the Commonwealth games. They are slightly different from the slick World Championships (as seen last week) or the massive political  production that is the Olympics.

This morning we had an English gymnast clinging on grimly to take silver despite injury, the English pairs were the first home in the Triathlon (Visually Impaired), with Northern Ireland taking 2nd and 4th in the Women’s event (they are twins). Wales took 4th in the Men’s event and an English pair were fifth despite having to repair a puncture in the cycling section.  The male winners were unplaced at the Olympics after their chain snapped and the woman VI runner had a painful stitch during the running phase, which she ran off.

That’s a lot of news, plenty of drama and some human interest.

You know what the main story was on the news? Football. More particularly, our women footballers who are playing tonight. As usual, football trumps all other sports. As usual, I am tempted into making a number of comments on football being bad for sport in general, and for the moral health of the country.

A&BC Gum Football cards 1970

When my Dad died we were severely limited as to who could attend, and we had to sit apart, even though we had sat next to each other in the car for 60 miles, and we weren’t allowed to sing – we had to have recorded music. However, football fans were allowed to sit together in pubs to watch matches, hug each other and sing in each others faces. Two rules . One, strict, rule for a grieving family. One, relaxed, rule for football supporters. It’s a bread and circuses sort of situation isn’t it, with Princes and politicians  all pretending to be football supporters when it suits them.

One of my kids went to a holiday football camp some years ago. He went because his mates were going and because he liked all sports. He was laughed at by other kids for his boots (they were rugby boots but still did the job) and criticised by the people running the course (all part-time players from the lower leagues) because he would never be good enough to be professional. What sort of people treat a ten-year-old like that?

Sorry about the photos, I don’t have many relating to sport.

Topical Times Football Cards

 

More Serious Stuff – Deep Thought, Castration and the Importance of Parents

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I started doing more thinking after writing yesterday’s post. There was a lot to think about, mostly about murdered teenagers. After bringing two kids up in a city that had a poor reputation at one time, you can get quite thoughtful.

Interestingly, the writers blame the Labour government for the various problems, where most of the people these days blame the Conservatives. That is probably a sign that we should leave politics out of the discussion.

Youth clubs, youth sports and such things are, at best, distractions rather than a cure. If you are keeping kids off the street they can’t get into trouble. When looking at funding possibilities I’ve often seen the terms “distraction” or “displacement activity”.

We had quite a few difficult kids at the various rugby clubs we attended. Some were the typical sort of inner city kid you’d expect to be in trouble (who we used to work with in Rugby League) and others, in Rugby Union, were much more affluent and better educated.

One of the things I noticed was that you could put a lot of effort in and make no discernible difference. I also noticed that if the parents weren’t engaged nothing seemed to work. That held good for all the kids – parents who were at work all the time were just as bad as parents who deserted their family.

So my solution to the problem is to put the family back at the centre of things. I’d also be prepared to think about castrating absent fathers who didn’t live up to their responsibilities, though it’s likely that this would be a last resort.

It’s about the basics – decent places to live, education, jobs, reducing teenage pregnancies…

I’m starting to sound like a beauty queen here, but I’ll stop short of advocating world peace and an end to famine. It is, however, a matter of some regret that I didn’t start thinking forty years ago – it might actually have made a difference at that point.

Does anyone have any good ideas?

 

What Does £32 Million Buy? (Part 1)

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The easy, topical answer, is that it buys a Winter Olympic team, along with 59 athletes, four medals and the material for some great film scripts.

A crowd-funded bobsleigh team, crashing skater and an ice dancer who came back from smashing a kneecap – it’s all there.

I’m not a great sportsman, as you may have guessed from my photos and various comments on size and sloth, but every four years I rotate through Olympics, Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games. The kids make me watch a variety of World Championships, there’s the Rugby World Cup,the Rugby League World Cup and plenty of local news on skaters and kayakers who train in Nottingham. It’s hard not to get involved with all that around on TV.

Now, the question, as raised by National Treasure “Eddie the Eagle” Edwards, is, are we spending too much on Winter sports. We aren’t, it seems, a natural Winter Sport nation.

Unfortunately we aren’t naturally good at Summer Sports, cricket or football either.

So, where do I go from here?

I could go on to discuss sport, politics and the national mood, which always seems to improve when we do well.  It often improves when we lose too, as we all love an underdog and Elise Christie, though devoid of medals, has set an example of determination that’s a great example to the rest of us.

I could talk about sport and money. It’s a massive subject, and it has plenty to offer a cynic, particularly if, like me, you believe that the money would be better spent on developing better drugs programmes. If people want to run as fast as chemicals allow, let’s help them. I’m looking forward to the two minute mile.

However, for those who want to do it the old-fashioned way – hard work and dedication – I’d have a separate set of games. I’d also ban transgressors for life instead of handing them a short rest between games. Yes Justin Gatlin, I’m looking at you.

Finally, as we’ve sort of covered politics, cash and the cowardice of governing bodies, it might be a good time to mention James “Darkie” Peters. I’ll say no more. If you’re interested in the history of sport, apartheid and spineless administrators you will find it interesting.

In Part 2 I will look at what else you can buy with £32 million.