- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
For anyone who likes Pink Floyd, there’s nothing better than popping on The Dark Side Of The Moon to escape the world for 43-minutes. Some people just don’t get their music though and are mystified how anyone can listen to one song, let alone a full album.
But if you take the time to listen to each song over and over, the music starts to become addictive.
Sport is the same.
It’s like one of those 3D magic eye pictures that you have to concentrate on for a long time. Once you see the picture it all makes sense. You start by understanding the rules, then you begin to see more and more than you ever realised was there.
Perhaps people who hate sport simply don’t want to see the picture, knowing what sport addiction can do to a person.
When I read ‘The Man Who Owns the News’, I was surprised to find that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t even like sport, but he does understand and appreciates its power. After all, if it wasn’t for his acquisition of pay-television sport, particularly English football, he may never have recovered all of his debts in the early 90s (according to the book it was $7 billion at one stage).
If Murdoch doesn’t like it, how many people are out there in the same boat?
If you’ve ever lived with someone who doesn’t appreciate the joys of watching elite sport these comments may sound familiar:
* ‘Can’t you just tape it if it’s on at 2am?’
No, no and no! Watching live sport is a phenomenon like no other. You are watching un-scripted action. Anything can happen and it often does, which is why Bill Lawry says ‘It’s all happening.’
You remember where you were when Stephen Larkham kicked THAT field goal or Tim Cahill scored THAT goal. It’s just not the same when you’re watching sport delayed the next day. It takes so much effort just to avoid hearing the result and then you find out you didn’t set the timer properly or the tape runs out at a crucial moment, or worse, you tape over treasured family memories. Not good. Basically only bad things can happen when you don’t watch sport live.
* ‘Who’s winning the cricket?’
Is this the most clichéd non-sports-fan question of all-time? You know the person that asks this doesn’t really care, but they ask anyway. You then try and explain that it’s hard to tell who’s winning since it’s only the first innings of the Test.
Unfortunately this opens up more questions so in future you just say Australia.
* ‘There’s a really good movie I want to watch. Don’t worry, we can flick it over in the ads so you can check the score.’
This usually happens on a Friday night during the winter football season when competing television networks put chick flicks on.
* ‘You don’t need to hear the commentators, so I’m going to put some music on.’
True, we don’t need to hear the commentators, but the sound of the crowd helps. I like to feel like I’m there and it’s pretty hard to do that when ABBA is blaring in the background. ‘Dancing Queen’ and rugby league aren’t exactly the best of combinations.
* ‘Why are you watching this? Australia/your team isn’t even playing’
A favourite comment by non-sport lovers during any World Cup. It’s assumed that because Australia isn’t playing, you are not meant to watch, like you’re some sort of traitor supporting the enemy in a war.
Television network executives who don’t understand the power of sport have made this mistake before by assuming what the audience wants to watch.
Channel Nine were most upset (putting it mildly) when Australia didn’t qualify for the 2002 FIFA World Cup because they bought a small selection of marquee matches and the finals that they were forced to show live in prime-time.
Worse, they would have to drop the Footy Show in place of this joke of a World Cup. No Australia meant poor ratings. Or so they thought.
How wrong they were.
The Argentina v England match outrated State of Origin, and a Big Brother double eviction on in the same week. Then the World Cup final outrated the AFL Grand Final, NRL Grand Final, and Melbourne Cup. All of a sudden the executives were pissed off because Channel Nine didn’t buy more matches.
The question then became why aren’t you watching the World Cup? Everyone else is.
Sports journalists may be unfairly referred to as the ‘toy department’ in many newsrooms – for not covering serious news – but at least they know that if the mainstream media stopped covering sport, newspapers would crumble, pay-television would be non-profitable and advertisers would disappear faster than Usain Bolt running 100-metres.
So even if you don’t like sport, there’s no escaping it. Just ask Rupert Murdoch. The easiest thing to do is learn to love it.
What’s your best bet? For great odds on all your favourite sports check out PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.