As long as I remember, there’s always been sport. It’s fair to say sport is my life, I’ve been playing and following all sorts since I could understand how to turn on a TV. I can debate sporting topics all day, from problems with the DRS to the NRL salary cap to why the NZRU should apologise for ruining the 1976 Olympics.
At the end of the day playing sport is what I love most, even though I’m just a weekend hack. My passion is rugby. My career highlight was sitting on the bench for my club’s premier team. I’ve never scored a century, come close to shooting a below-par round or hit a home-run in last innings to win a title game. I play sport because of the friendships and the memories, even if those memories can get a little exaggerated after a couple of beers.
I’m a George Orwell fan. I’m an amateur literature buff at best, but one of my proudest moments at school was when I figured out that Animal Farm was all about the Russian Revolution before anyone else did. Plus that it was only about 100 pages long and I could check it off my compulsory reading list after one sitting.
One of his most famous quotes is “sport is war minus the shooting”. This has been referenced so many times over the years it has lost most of what he originally meant, given that it is mostly used juxtaposed with injuries or superhuman feats of fortitude. So, let me refresh what he actually meant:
(Sport) is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.
Wow. He’d be no fun to sit next to in the grandstand. But is he right? Well, I think he is – but he’s also kind of missing the point.
To me, sport is a microcosm of life. Every match, meet, bout, game or whatever is struggle for success, to make it to the end having achieved victory. Within that struggle we form relationships with our team mates, rivalries with the opposition and overcome obstacles.
Then there are rules. The rules in sport are more or less the same to that in life. Don’t do anything wrong and you won’t get penalised, and vice versa. The rules are just adjudicated differently. In most sports it’s just one pair of eyes to pick up what’s happening and whether it’s fair or foul, no witness testimony.
Let’s take rugby for example. Fifteen of us walk into a changing room as law-abiding citizens and walk out determined to push the laws of the game as far as we can in order to win. We get a buzz from getting away with pushing the law. Cheating is officially frowned upon but celebrated in the changing shed (for the most part) if it’s successful.
Sport lets us be human. We can be jealous because we want to win. We can be boastful because we are given an outlet to do so where it’s socially acceptable.
So the best and worst part about sport is that it’s black and white. Put the ball down over the line and it’s a try. Five points. If the ref doesn’t think so it’s not. He might be wrong but it doesn’t matter. Decisions happen and the game goes on. There’s no arguing or worrying about whose park it was, if your coffee is too hot, or sweating over everything you’re saying on an awkward first date.
Everything is simple in sports. You’re just trying to win, enjoy yourself, prove something. It’s life stripped back to the one key goal – success.
There’s no hidden agenda on Saturday afternoons, it’s a way to forget all the complicated things that are going on in life. For 80 minutes nothing else matters other than getting a ball across a line. That’s the attraction and maybe where Orwell is getting a bee in his bonnet for the wrong reason. Sport lets us be human. We can be jealous because we want to win. We can be boastful because we are given an outlet to do so where it’s socially acceptable. We can be violent because conflict is in our nature and it’s better let out on a field than outside a pub later on that night.
Then at the end we shake hands and get back to reality. Study, work, relationships. The sort of stuff that requires thought and careful contemplation. So it’s nice to have a little war each week where we can think about something else.