Tag Archives: sport

Close to home

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A light has just dawned for me, and it’s not a pretty sight. A bunch of teens brutalise a defenceless creature in a suburban park, and we’re unequivocally sickened and outraged, and rightly. But it’s happened in the middle of both a duck hunting and a jumps racing season. These “sports” elicit outrage too, but the interests are much more sectional. Why the difference?

Probably it’s because the former is far closer to home, in several senses. This didn’t occur out in the sticks or even in a provincial centre; it happened in inner suburban Melbourne. And if it actually took place among local neighbourhood kids in Moonee Ponds, it might just as well have happened with someone’s kids in Moorabbin, Montmorency or Moreland. Again, hunting and racing are pretty removed from all but a few in our community, but anyone can take a walk in a park. Lastly, organised activities are formally monitored by public authorities. So we can calmly leave it to the politicians, the RSPCA and the “sporting” fraternities to fight it out.

But there’s no difference, is there?


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King Warnie

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Whoever first dubbed Shane Warne “the King of Spin” spoke more than they knew. Move over, Will & Kate. No offence intended toward our esteemed constitutional monarchy, but we just don’t need to salivate over a royal wedding on the other side of the world when we now have one in the offing in our own backyard. The Warnie-Hurley caper has everything a royal gossip columnist could want.

A mansion for starters. Not Buck House, granted. But it looks similar enough. And the gaggle of journos out the front would pass for a horde of tourists at the changing of the guard. And then there’s the actress, the rich no-longer-married playboy who seems to get around, the dark luxury car, the golf club, the pursuing paparazzi contingent, the bookmakers’ punts on the nuptials, the wire-tapping. (They call it Twitter these days. I’m sure Charles and Camilla would have used it if it was around then. With 140 characters they’d just have left some bits out.) No corgis sighted yet, but I’m sure they’re out the back.

We’ve got it all. Forget the republic. Monarchy’s much more fun.


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Relativity in sport

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As erstwhile founding father of the Anti-Football League, Keith Dunstan (Opinion, 29/12) is well placed to comment on some of the excesses of Australian sporting fandom. However he, like Guy Thevenet (Letters, 29/12), might do well to recognise that the true thinking behind some of the more flowery commentary on Australia’s Ashes performance is far more varied than meets the eye.

To be sure there are some Australian sports fans – too many probably, for whom life itself is worth living, or not, according to the colour of the medal or which captain finally holds aloft the trophy. The sooner they get over it, the better for us all. But many who share their vocabulary do not share their myopic passions. We join in the collective banter, the language of the herd, not because the scoreboard ultimately matters but because our sense of mutual belonging matters profoundly.

Sport is one of the great levellers of our culture. There are probably few subjects that so quickly and painlessly make friends out of strangers, regardless of estate. Ignore the language. It’s just sport.


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Jumping for blood

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What kind of state leadership permits a racing body to continue a “sport” on the expectation of three cruel, senseless animal deaths per year? Probably the kind that’s driven more by electoral pragmatism than moral courage. Animal cruelty is a crime, eliciting stiff penalties on conviction and widespread condemnation. Our cars carry bumper stickers about pets being far more than Christmas presents, and responsible parents teach their children to protect and care for animals. Perhaps Messrs Brumby and Hulls could explain to those families why horses are different when entertainment and money are involved. I sure can’t.


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It’s more than Rugby

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The ABC’s Four Corners programme exposing the ugly depths of misogyny in the NRL raises broader questions, requiring the attention of far more sectors of our society than the NRL itself. Among the programme’s final visuals was a clip of a team running onto the ground through a cheer squad made up of attractive young women dressed for attention.

The attitudes of some of the players are unspeakable, for sure. But why the surprise that this should be so? Top level sport in Australia continues to absorb uncritically much of the public culture perfected in the US. Entertainment is the name of game, and the action in the middle is no longer sufficient. To the traditional cocktail of booze and club passion must now be added penetrating bass-rich music with the gyrations of scantily clad women in the spotlight. Cricket, we thought had escaped, but the advent of Twenty20 and the IPL has seen to that too.

If sport’s leaders and marketers give the players and their fans reason to suppose that women are for drooling, they needn’t be too shocked when it’s taken to heart.

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