Love the game, not the player
The kind who supports an individual sportsman or woman.
I’m not talking simple admiration. Or patriotism. We’ve all urged on Sonia, ducked for Dunne, fretted over Harrington’s latest swing reconstruction, winced at word of a fresh boil on Kelly’s behind. And we can all hail individual greatness when it presents itself. Michael Johnson’s impossibly elegant posture, Woods’ pre-fire hydrant dominance, Federer pre-twins.
But should we hitch our wagons to their stars? I’m talking about those who’ve sent off the postal order to the fan club, the punter who follows a player around the circuit, who may, unknowingly, be on a watch list as a suspected stalker. The people who scrawled signs to bring to the darts long before Barry Hearn doled out those cheap sponsored ones.
The sort who make a nuisance of themselves shouting at Wimbledon or the Crucible. “C’mon Johnnnn.” As if a hike in John’s fortunes could possibly offer them the same emotional benefits as another title for the first English football team they happened to see on TV.
Serena Williams cemented my distaste for the hero-worshippers this week by telling us she doesn’t even like tennis anyway.
“I have never liked sports and could never understand how I became an athlete.” She’d prefer to go shopping, seemingly.
And there lies the danger for any individual sport groupie. How can you risk supporting someone who may not even truly care herself? There’s an existential crisis right there. You’ve lived every ball while she’s wondering if there’s 40% off today at J-Crew. Or Fred Segal’s more likely, I suppose, if Fred does sales.
It’s not as if we haven’t had fair warning that our icons may not always share our fervour for their talents. Andre Agassi insisted he hated tennis “with a dark and secret passion.” Eubank openly reviled boxing. Ronnie O’Sullivan has long approached the tiresome business of clearing the colours with the relish someone else might ordinarily reserve for cleaning the toilet.
Of course, team players too, occasionally grow disdainful of the sports that brought them fame and fortune. Listening to him now, you are certain he rarely gives football a second thought, but Alan Hansen eventually retired because his mind packed up, not his legs. It was the stress that got him. On a BBC feature, Hansen recalled sleepless nights juggling the permutations ahead of that weekend’s fixtures; needing Everton to drop a point here or Arsenal there. Eventually, he began to wonder what it was all for.
Shamrock Rovers import Rohan Ricketts has written that many Premier League players he knows have little interest in football beyond its impact on their bank balance.
“Outside influences can ruin your love for the game. First you’re a talent, then you’re just a commodity, you get handled like a product. But it’s not just the clubs; the fans are guilty of not treating players like humans either.”
One prominent Gaelic footballer, who’d prefer not to be named, wishes he never got involved in the sport, finds it tedious and despises people’s clamour to talk football with him day and night, jailing him in a persona that’s not him at all.
Why, then, do they subject themselves to it, these malcontents? Money, in most cases. Family pressure initially, perhaps. Blind servitude to a talent. For those of us who love sport, it can be difficult to accept some of our leading lights may have no feeling for it. Deep down, we suspect there must be some fondness keeping them going.
Agassi admits in his controversial autobiography; “Though I hate tennis, I like the feeling of hitting a ball dead perfect. It’s the only peace. When I do something perfect, I enjoy a split second of sanity and calm.”
Is it the game then that they despise or the nonsense and grind that surround it? You suspect Eubank also enjoyed that split second when he landed a sweet one.
And when you see Serena bawl a line judge out with the ferocity she has managed on a couple of occasions, you know that aggression could not simply come from a desire to swell a bank balance.
But perhaps she truly does prefer shopping. Just in case, we won’t get too attached.
