The dark dangers of premature celebration
Remember John Barnes, furtive as an exam cogger, sharing an illicit low-five of triumph with John Aldridge, a minute before Michael Thomas caused them all to slump to their knees, cursing their presumption.
Will it ever be forgotten that Nigel Mansell waved to the Montreal crowds on that infamous final lap, only to stall his engine and see Nelson Piquet gloat by before the flag?
And it is a wonder Steve Ovett didn’t drown in the tidal wave of schadenfreude that splashed across the Irish Sea when John Treacy caught him, hands in the air, dawdling up to the line that time in Crystal Palace.
There was a time when we were only too pleased to take anyone down a peg who seemed to be getting ahead of themselves. That would teach him, as the auld lad used to say, not to be acting the great fella.
But all that has changed.
Last Sunday, having levelled the Australian Open final at two sets all, Rafael Nadal embarked on a thrusting, sliding, whooping orgy of celebration. So completely did Rafa give in to his emotions, he might, for all the world, have been a relative in the audience on Winning Streak.
Around an hour later, he was beaten. But nobody suggested he had been a little forward with the Platoon re-enactment. Mainly because in tennis nowadays, someone wildly celebrates the winning of every single, blessed point. A man can no longer hit a forehand down the line without congratulating himself in the heartiest manner possible.
All told, the record five hours and 53 minutes it took Rafa and Novak to get their business done last Sunday morning would have been more impressive if it wasn’t padded with at least one hour of ball-hopping and rooting. And another of fist pumps. Phlegmatic men like Edberg and Borg might have been home and back in their jacuzzis before Rafa’s first shirt change.
But our chronically exuberant tennis heroes are far from the worst offenders in the serial celebration stakes. At least they are, in the main, savouring passages of positive play.
Not so, many of our GAA players. We mightn’t see a lot of it in the National Leagues where lads are, after all, only pretending. But as soon as the serious business starts this summer footballers, and particularly hurlers, will be back to riotous displays of jubilation every time they win a free on their own 45.
Forget defining the fist pass, we’ll soon have coaching seminars on the fist pump. All of this in games where, once, putting over a sideline from your own 21 in the last minute would have entitled you to, at most, a lick of the fingers, a frown and a trot back to your position with the slightest hint of a spring in the step.
Like a lot of very wrong things, I suppose all this fooling came in from America. Tomorrow evening in Indianapolis will be like the last knockings of a messy stag as heavy men continually mount one another in bawdy displays of camaraderie every time a fast man drops the ball. And that’s before we see a turnover, let alone a touchdown.
Some of it, of course, is pure badness. Sowing it into your opponent. But there’s a whiff of psychology wafting about too. Back in the GAA, rampant self-congratulation may well be a not-so-distant cousin of that savage hunger we can’t go far without hearing about?
Sports psychologist Canice Kennedy argues that, since teams now work towards specific goals in terms of blocks, tackles and turnovers, it’s inevitable that they recognise progression towards those targets. “You’re seeing more exuberance and celebration for things other than scores. It can be a good, natural thing and positively reinforces a player about his performance.”
But another man of science, Dr Allen Fox, once at four in the US tennis rankings and author of several books on the psychology of winning, wonders if all this shaping isn’t launching a spiral of reflection that prevents athletes staying right where they need to be to give their best; in the present moment.
“If you allow yourself to celebrate the good moments in a match you automatically must allow yourself to lament the errors and problems that invariably arise in a match.”
Perhaps, if he had stayed then in the here and now, Barnesy would have taken the ball into the corner when he had a chance and Thomas would never have charged through that midfield.
Nadal, too, might have taken the fifth.
