- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
First, experienced fox Phil Kearns takes the stick to a first-up horrible performance by the Melbourne Rebels with, “They (the Rebels) won’t win a game all year.”
Then, a similarly wise rugby head like David Lord comes back, after the Rebel’s first-up win a week later, with the statement that the Rebel’s coach Rod Macqueen, “is a genius.”
It’s either pay-back time, or, a classic example of how the ‘outcome-exaggeration’ syndrome haunts all sports.
Sports contests are intentionally designed to be games of chance.
The Rebels have played two games. They have lost one, and won one. A consequence, I would think, which is well within the bounds of possibility.
A winning team will always stir up retrospective explanations and anecdotal evidence.
In exactly the same way, responses to losing will inevitably revert to type: “We’ve got to get back to basics”, “We have a few things to work on”, “You can’t afford to make mistakes against a good opposition”, “I’m very proud of the boys”, and even, “They won’t win a game all year”, or, “He’s a genius”!
“Sports myths” are these routine reasons offered, more or less instantaneously, to explain past and future performance outcomes, and then, of course, what should be done about it.
These myths are widely embraced despite the absence of any scientific or logical foundation.
These hackneyed fabrications typically couple the uncertainty of sport with the inevitably changeable performance of both individual players and teams.
The feverishly promoted urges to predict contest outcomes that saturate exchanges between commentators and punters alike, grow to be so familiar they become an unquestioned element of the game.
On top of this, there exists an absolute need to give ‘answers’, because “I don’t know why” (which is probably close to the truth) would never be accepted, and such a response would very quickly be turned back into the face of the respondent.
“Sports myths” have become the default mechanism to escape the complexity of accounting for chance outcomes, and any other situations that have no obvious explanation – from game scores to inexplicable decisions and bizarre behaviour.
That great joy and excitement can be the experience of sport is not at issue.
But an important question is raised: if so much time, money and ‘expertise’ is being thrown at sport, why is it that what is so basic to sport’s credibility, is addressed in such a naïve way?
Certainly sport thrives on stage-managed optimism and exaggeration, but it is also true that a lot of invention continues to create a mountain of fanciful “sports myths”.
This article is based on proposals put forward in recently published book, “EXPLODING SPORTS MYTHS: exposing the nonsense in some of our fondest notions about sport,” by George Shirling, and introduced by Rod Macqueen and Jim Webster. The book is available from all bookstores and online.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.