Why do we watch sport?
I’m sure it’s a question a lot of wives have been asking themselves in the past 48 hours as they’ve watched their husbands, so lovable and attentive during the year, transform into beer-bellied, peanut-popping lounge bozos while the Boxing Day Test is on.
Chances are the vast majority of those men aren’t watching the cricket because they love the game. I’d venture most are like my own father, who, through a mixture of a paralysing holiday boredom and adherence to the ongoing “national event” status of the match, feels obligated to sit in front of the plasma and at least watch a session or two while Australia still has an opponent to play.
Me? I’d rather break rocks with my forehead. Cricket lost me a long time ago and I couldn’t give a toss about the Boxing Day Test, even though I still love my country and enjoy drinking beer and eating peanuts as much as any of my countrymen.
I’ve actually been reading my copy of the latest World Soccer, which contains an interesting though typically dry piece from Brian Glanville on Tele Santana’s 1982 Brazilian World Cup side, the great Selecao that by rights should have won the tournament but went out to Italy in their quarter-final in Barcelona.
Many pundits have pegged Santana’s team as the best ever not to win a World Cup. España 82 was this writer’s first World Cup – I was in Spain at the time, following my mother and her boyfriend around the Mallorcan coast, as nine-year-olds do – and the provider of my earliest football memory: Zico’s bicycle-kick goal against New Zealand.
To this day, it remains as vivid as it was the day I saw it in that bar in Soller; and for one reason only: it was a thing of beauty. That whole team, as much as they were “failures”, were beautiful. And it’s why fans all around the world, of which I am just one, can recall them to this day, whereas you would be hard pressed to find anyone (unless they are Italian, of course) able to recount the highlights reel of the dour world champions that year, the Azzurri.
Grinding your rivals’s snouts remorselessly into the turf isn’t particularly beautiful and it’s why I don’t care much for the Australian cricket team or watching the Boxing Day Test.
You can appreciate the skill and commitment of the Australians, and you must respect them for their dominance, but as my colleague Spiro Zavos touched on in this piece for The Roar last month, a bit more beauty and a little less robotics might make cricket a game that transfixes us for reasons other than the simple fact we’re actually winning.
I watch sport because I want to be moved, not because I want to gloat. Keke Rosberg moved me, where Michael Schumacher does not. John McEnroe moved me, where Roger Federer does not. Gary Ablett moved me, where Matthew Lloyd does not.
Naturally I want my country to win every contest it enters, but perhaps unnaturally I would happy for it to lose every time so long as it plays with verve, spirit and, most crucially, some fallibility. Results are for the record books, but beauty endures.
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josh form canberra said | December 28th 2007 @ 11:46am | Report comment
Another interesting blog jesse
One of the things that caught my interest is how at the end you said that even if we lose but do it in style and grace that can sometimes overpower the sense of losing. Do you feel this is why aussies love their socceroos more post world cup because of the heart that they showed against italy even though weez were robbed at the end.
Also combining this cricket vs soccer blog what do you think of sydney fc playing adelaide at the adelaide oval tonight. Is it as kossie says a backwards step for the game or is it like another source of multi use that affects a-leage games(ie melbourne at home with the field messed up by afl, sydney league etc,)
P.S. Do the spaniards always allow 9 year olds into bars?
Jesse Fink said | December 28th 2007 @ 12:33pm | Report comment
It is absolutely why Australia took the Socceroos to our collective heart at the World Cup and I believe it was what set us apart from other countries at the World Cup. If you’re interested, Josh, I expand upon that very theme in my book, “15 Days in June: How Australia Became a Football Nation”. As I write on page 104, “The way we accepted our elimination, not our unexpected progression, was how Australia found acceptance as a football nation at the World Cup. The Socceroos set themselves apart with their positivity, their fearlessness and, above all, their ingrained sense of fair play in a tournament that would be marred by cheating, violence and gamesmanship. (Only once, during the course of Australia’s four games, could I recall anything approaching dishonesty: when Cahill went down after an ankle tackle from Brazilian captain Cafu and clutched at his face as if he’d been splashed with acid.) Old myths were also destroyed. No longer could Australians be called ‘dirty’, a rabble of hackers and knuckle-dragging convicts who tore holes in opponents’ shins. The Socceroos played good technical football as well as anyone and showed they could adapt to whatever system Hiddink threw at them.
“Australia showed the world it was possible to play the game without cynicism or underhandedness and still win. The Socceroos may have ultimately had their football naivete exposed by a more cutthroat team, yet the players, and their supporters, wouldn’t have had it any other way. This might have been the ‘world game’, but we still played it with Australian values first, European style second.”
As for Adelaide Oval, no issue with the game being played there at all. I have more of an issue with Kossie being coach of Sydney FC, but that’s for another blog.
Spanish bars? Yes, they let me in. As far as I know, you can get into any bar in the world, no matter your age or height, so long as you strut.
Mick of Newie said | December 28th 2007 @ 12:49pm | Report comment
Zico’s bicycle kick is my second football memory although my recollection is from Peter Wilkens and Craig Johnson’s coverage on the ABC. I also recall the wonderfully named Socrates hitting a penalty off one step and one of Craig Johnson’s goals of the tournament (from an African team I think) that involved going the length of the field in 5 accurate touches.
My first football memory was Buddy Curren scoring a goal from miles out that took the biggest deflection you ever saw for Newcastle KB United (circa ’79) my recollection was NBN television repeating it ad naueseam.
Here is my theory on sport: sport is a bit like friendship. Kids can have lots of both and care deeply about them. As an adult you only have a limited capacity for a true close friendship, some say its only 1 some say 5. With sport my theory is that a true sports fan you can only have one sport that really grabs you. You can have a passing interest in others, you might watch a game, you can be moved by a particular athlete or story, but there is only one sport (or more likely even one team) that really grabs you. You mark games in your calendar, you arrange bbqs, family gatherings and holidays around them, you measure good or bad years by how your team went.
People who claim an interest in all sports are like the fakers with lots of mates but no friends. In the media Tracey Holmes is the worst example of this. The Back Page on Fox is home to a bunch of these fakers. In defence of your old foe Fitz at least he has the good grace to say he has no interest in certain sports.
I loved reading the late Matt Price talk about Freo footy club, Nick Hornby and Arsenal in Fever Pitch, Norman Mailer talk about boxing in When We Were Kingsor listen to Phil Liggett on cycling.
My theory diverges from you because I am not sure that I wouldn’t be happier if my team won ugly than lost gloriously.
I am always a bit sceptical about the robotics v style argument. The same examples come up McEnroe v Federer, Palmer v Nicklause, Seve v Faldo. Golf and Tennis are good case studies, the level that both are played at now is unbelievable, but I can’t watch more than 2 minutes at a time.
I think they are boring because I am not moved by it. There is no tribalism, they are events for what Roy Keane called the cucumber sandwich brigade. As an example my work has spent a small fortune buying tickets to the Men’s amd womens Aust open final to take some clients. No idea who will be playing but it doesn’t matter. It is an “event” and the whole crowd will be full of fakers. Presumably the same thing happens at every golf and tennis tournament around the world. I am not sure it would have been any better in Palmer’s or Seve’s or McEnroe’s day, its just the water cooler stories would have been better.
Spiro Zavos said | December 28th 2007 @ 1:06pm | Report comment
My first memory of seeing really good footballers live was of a team of England All-Stars which toured New Zealand in the late 1960s and defeated Wellington 7-0 at the Basin Reserve, even though the Wellington keeper, Peter Whiting, could have played premier football in England. The star of the match was Tom Finney whose mesmorising runs down the touchline confirmed the cliche that football is ‘the beautiful game.’
Cpaaa said | December 28th 2007 @ 3:29pm | Report comment
2005 november john aloisi with out a dout for many australians. australias greatest sporting event ever. not only for football fans but general public as well. has a nation ever been so moved. even the most proudest and most stubborn rugby,afl or cricket fan, would have to say ” i want what they have”. has any other sport celebrated in such a way as if we had already won the tournament. and we wernt going to germany just to make up numbers, we were going to germany with something to prove to ourselves. unlike “australia” in other so called world cups where the hype is more value than the actual event.
p.s to josh of canberra. i is in spain, and yes 9 year olds are still allowed in bars, smoke, and ask for a” j.d and coke por favor”.
sheek said | December 28th 2007 @ 8:56pm | Report comment
Football/Soccer is not my first port of call, but I remember that 1982 Brazilian team. I was devastated when they were eliminated. Like many casual lovers of sport, I was moved by their beautiful playing of the game.
Zico, skipper Socrates, Oscar & Junior (every Brazil team has a Junior?!). How could they lose with names like Socrates & Oscar? And 1986 also, but to an equally beatiful team in France. A Brazil-France final in either 1982 or 86 would have been what the game deserved. Or one title each. And Holland in 1990.
Sadly, it doesn’t always work out like that. johhny Warren argued we should play like the Brazilians. Like you Jesse, I watch sport to be moved. Sometimes, I can be over-critical. The hum-drum bores me. I can do that anytime!
Kazama said | December 28th 2007 @ 10:43pm | Report comment
One thing you hear a lot about football is that people feel it often, as opposed to other sports, reflects their lives. Sometimes in football you can be a top side, play well, and still get beaten, and sometimes you get lucky and win ugly – like in reality, where it is quite rare for everything to go one’s way regardless of their ability or the amount of effort they have expended.
Seemingly a lot of people don’t appreciate the truths in our great game and would much rather whittle away five days watching a match that they already know is only going to be won by one side. This is the same reason why our cinemas are full of badly made feel-good movies and rom-coms, where the losers predictably always win the big one and get the girls – something that couldn’t be further removed from reality. Everyone wants to be a winner, and the Australian cricket team is quite good at providing it’s followers with victories that they feel like they are a part of, if only because they are Aussies too.
When Australia equalised against Japan at the World Cup my closest friends (plus some strangers) and I celebrated like we’d won the lottery. When Totti slotted that penalty I sat in my living room stunned, heartbroken, and I didn’t move or speak much for about an hour. I’ve never come close to either emotional extreme while ever watching a game of cricket, or any other sport for that matter, regardless of the stakes.
In 90 minutes of football last night at Adelaide Oval I felt more emotion than I have experienced in the entirety of cricket, SANFL and Rugby matches I have seen at that venue. And believe me, I’ve been to quite a few. Perhaps the most telling feature of last night’s match was the atmosphere. I’ve never heard crowd interaction like that at Adelaide Oval ever before. I think that says something about the magical qualities of our game in comparison to the other codes. Maybe football deserves its own Boxing Day test.
Mick of Newie said | December 31st 2007 @ 6:01am | Report comment
nice post Kazama, I spent 90 minutes last night geting another life lesson at EnergyAustralia Stadium. I am still trying to digest what the lesson was.
I think it might be that possession, time in opposition half, corners, free kicks, shots, shots on target all count for nothing if the other mob score more goals than you.
I feel for my 7 year old son, he should be able to enjoy his childhood without being exposed to such harsh realities.
Cpaaa said | December 31st 2007 @ 3:21pm | Report comment
kazama pretty deep article. i agree with it all.
i also hope next season there is a a boxing day football match.
even a wholle round would be better.
Hopovski said | January 2nd 2008 @ 3:04pm | Report comment
Mick – there’s no way you can only have one sport that truly grabs you. I enjoy plenty of sports and, if i’m honest to you and myself, follow at least two religiously: football and aussie rules.
If we’re all bringing up our earliest football memories i’ll tell you mine – it’s a bit more recent than all of yours… The late George Grljusich calling famous Glory names like Boutsianis, Kalegeracos and Despotvski over the radio as I kicked a ball around my front yard on Sunday afternoons in the 90s.