In a World Experiencing COVID 19 is Sport a Necessity?
Orm Vs…Sport
I miss the weekly, sometimes bi-weekly schedule that sees my favorite soccer team play. The drama, the joy, and the inevitable sorrow that each game brings, like a blockbuster movie with 22 highly paid stars. These are all notable absentees from my weekend.
I miss the routine, which when I was younger revolved around the match, from Friday evening in a bar talking about who should start, until Sunday afternoon slowly digesting who definitely should not have started.
Now I have a family. Sport still plays a big part. I’ve been known to tackle the gargantuan ironing pile for the chance to watch a cricket match uninterrupted. Such sacrifices are made for our sporting interests and these alone.
I miss it, and I long for its return when it’s safe to do so. After all, 21 friends and I cannot suddenly start abandoning social distancing, it’s too risky and a danger to our families.
So why should sportspeople?
I still remember the first time I attended a live soccer game. A friend had gotten me a ticket to an evening match. We traveled across Birmingham (the UK’s second-largest city), an eleven-year-old and seven-year-old.
I was so excited I forgot to tell my parents.
Their frantic search for me at 11:00 pm, and subsequent scolding, was a price worth paying!
I recall walking through the rabbit warren below the main stadium, hearing what sounded like thousands of small thunderstorms raging in the stands above me.
The ascent up the steps revealed floodlights that illuminated the largest lushest carpet of vivid green grass I had ever seen.
Finally, the sound no longer masked by the concrete stand hit me, loud, raucous strangely melodic yet with a hint of aggression… I was hooked.
So began an obsession that has cost me thousands of pounds, numerous bad-tempered evenings, most weekends from August until May, and my first stereo, due to a last-minute defeat!
I have no doubt there are countless others out there reading this now, who have a similar tale.
These shared experiences bind sports fans together in the tightest and unforgiving of manacles.
Victorious seasons, defeats mercilessly snatched from the jaws of victory, and the feeling of betrayal when one of our heroes, up sticks and leaves for a better team, even at the age of 45 it still wrangles.
Sport holds a special place in society, one which alongside religion receives unparalleled loyalty. Wars have been fought, families divided, and marriages ended. Sport has even been responsible for small population explosions.
Sports is a billion-dollar industry due to the support and coverage it receives. The release of a new kit or a piece of sports equipment is coveted and subsequently purchased by millions of individuals.
Countries and cities have relinquished their moral code to ensure that these huge events are held in their backyards. Lives lost to erect stadia. Homes destroyed in huge clearings of citizens to ensure the aesthetics are right for the baying crowds at these events.
Yet despite this crass ugliness we still come back for more.
It’s the magic of sport after all.
Yet I am reminded in the times we are currently experiencing, that sport, whichever sport it is you follow is not as important as the life of your friend family, neighbor, or a stranger who appears as a statistic on a presentation slide by your countries government.
Indeed there is nothing we can hold more valuable than life itself, and a premature end no matter how long you have lived is still too short.
However, there are growing murmurs in the UK, and globally, for soccer and sport, in general, to help drag life back to normality.
Calls, for these young men and women to don their polyester armor and begin entertaining the masses. Whilst we sit at home, in an environment better suited to deter the risk of COVID 19.
The leading exponents of Basketball, Soccer, and Cricket to name but a few, are held up to a moral code that even our politicians are not held accountable too.
Their images adorn billboards, promote both the tools of their trade, the food they eat, and everything in between. Instagram and Twitter accounts are scoured by fans and critics alike looking for a glimpse into their daily lives or a faux pas to send them spiraling from their precariously balanced pedestal.
These gods of sport are often in their late teens and early twenties but expected to behave with the experience of someone way beyond their years.
They are still growing up, in a very public and demanding environment. Dealing with the daily stresses of life, albeit often with the luxury of being able to cope financially, but a dead person never needed money.
Now we find ourselves about to thrust them into their respective coliseums to perform for our entertainment.
After all, Netflix can only hold our attention for so long, and we cannot wait forever…
Let the games begin?
