Remember the name Majid Abedini, my friends. Mark it well. Write it on your hand. Enter it in your phone. Etch it deep in your brain. For it is a name you will have cause to celebrate in the not too distant future.
For Majid Abedini is a man of destiny, a Messiah sent to free us all, and in particular those of us for who the cruel vicissitudes of sport have become a kind of psychological prison over the years.
This week, Majid Abedini changed the game forever and for everyone, when playing in an ITF Pro Circuit tournament in Antalya, Turkey. On the end of a dubious call, Abedini felt something snap inside him. Oh yes, no doubt for a moment he hesitated and considered pursuing the usual course of action, the same old routine of impotent anger and grudging sportsmanship so familiar to us all.
But then, Abedini, unlike so many millions before him, said no. Like Peter Finch in Network, or Elsa in Frozen, Abedini stood up and said, with his actions, what we all want to say every time a match official ruins our lives: I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.
And he damn well didn’t take it anymore, springing into action and chasing a match official from the court. And when the cowardly official hid behind a gate, Abedini kicked the gate and screamed like the proud, primal man he had finally become.
This is big, people. This is huge. As Springsteen said the snare drum at the start of “Like A Rolling Stone” kicked open the door of your mind, Abedini’s referee-chase has kicked open the door of sporting possibility. No more restrictions. No more blind obeisance to stifling tradition. No more hypocritical deference to arbitrary authority. To put it bluntly, no more referees and umpires strutting about like they own the damn place.
We now have the opportunity to redress the imbalance that sees our most beloved sportspeople denied their dreams by pompous officiating, authoritarian arrogance, and that mindless adherence to the “letter of the law” that suffocates every sporting event that hasn’t already been destroyed by sheer incompetence. We have the opportunity, not to eliminate officiating errors, but at least to supply a viable defence against them.
It’s a bright new future, but it requires action. Our sportsmen and women need to grab the baton that Majid Abedini had proffered and run with it. They need to make a conscious effort to bring about a new age in sport, where “doing an Abedini” not only becomes a universally understood phrase, but one that is pressed into service on a regular, if not daily, basis.
It’s about time, right? I mean every time you turn on a game of any description, it’s got those creepy little dudes running around, blowing their whistles and waving their skinny arms and interfering with the beautiful flow of our favourite sports. And they’re allowed to do so, unhindered by the impassioned howl of proletarian rebellion. Time to let that howl be heard.
Think about your average NRL referee, the absent-minded professor of the sporting world. Think about how much more thought he’s going to put into his next call of inside the ten if he knows that any perception of unfairness will cause a pack of hulking exemplars of musculature lunging at him with violent intent.
Consider also the typical AFL umpire, so pedantic and megalomaniacal and determined to get the cameras focused on him. If the sculpted he-men of the indigenous game stood ready to pounce on any umpire who did them wrong and shed blood in the name of justice, would the umps toss off their in-the-back and holding-the-ball interpretations so carelessly? I rather think not.
Let’s face facts: there is not a sport on earth that would not be improved by a playing group willing to break free of the bonds of convention, chase down and pulverise the men whose whims and drunken blackouts deface their attempts to create something beautiful out of athletic endeavour. From rugby’s technicality-obsessed schoolmarms, to soccer’s miniature Mussolinis, to figure-skating’s shady card-fiddlers, every sport’s officials could do with a whiff of terror in their nostrils to keep their minds focused.
Now bear in mind I am not suggesting a lawless bloodbath. I am fully aware that allowing pale, socially-maladjusted men with poor muscle tone to be ganged up on by angry mobs of society’s most perfect physical specimens is a brutally cruel way to carry out public executions.
So obviously I’m not suggesting that the match officials have to go in unarmed.
To compensate for the shift in social mores allowing a fair outlet for athletic frustrations, it will be necessary to level the playing field by giving the umps and refs some defence. Body armour is, of course, a no-brainer. And weaponry should be assigned depending on the risk posed by the playing group.
So for basketball referees, for example, simple wooden clubs and spears will be sufficient, as they’re only likely to have to face five to ten players at a time, and those players will be honed for aerobic capacity more than pure strength.
On the other hand an AFL umpire, who could have to fight off up to 22 men at once, some of whom could be trained for the power of key position play, will need sturdier varieties of machete or broadsword: although obviously an AFL ump will have quite a bit of support on his own side too, particularly if the goal umpires join in.
And so it will go: referees of the rugby codes will be especially heavily armoured and equipped with firearms, although not automatic or semi-automatic ones: we want a spectacle, not a first-person shooter RPG. Officials at American football games may be allowed small grenades in special circumstances.
And what of tennis, the game that began it all and showed us what could be? Tennis players are both fairly weedy and extremely mentally unstable, so despite the example of the craven yellowbelly who fled Abedini, tennis officials don’t need too much in the way of ordnance. Particularly when you consider how greatly they outnumber the players when you include all the linespeople. So really all you need is a small baton for each linesman and lineswoman, a medium-sized hatchet for the chair umpire, and a canister of tear gas for the match referee.
And if you can tell me you don’t want to see a match played under those circumstances, congratulations on your acceptance to the International Brotherhood of Shameless Liars.
Thank you, Majid Abedini. You’ve shown us the way, and sport will, thankfully, never be the same.
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