Grand gestures do little but distract from main event

Ho hum. This column has touched before on sport’s propensity to be sidetracked by events which have little or nothing to do with the events taking place inside the white lines, or whatever the equivalent parameters may be in the various codes that demand our attention, and here we are again.

There may be no such thing as an uneventful week in football in this era of the ubiquitous Sky Sports but this is inarguably one to savour what with four Champions League quarter-finals, a round of genuinely crucial Premier League fixtures and two FA Cup semi-finals as well as other fixtures in Ireland, Scotland and elsewhere.

We have already been treated to Borussia Dortmund’s injury-time comeback and Lionel Messi’s latest feat of brilliance and yet so much of the recent coverage of the game in England and, thus, here too has centred on whether or not Margaret Thatcher should be afforded a minute’s silence at grounds in the UK this weekend.

The details of that particular case have been dealt with in some detail already with Marina Hyde, for one, puncturing football’s self-aggrandisement in The Guardian this week and, by the by, Russell Brand’s jaw-dropping contemplation piece on the former PM’s death in the same paper is well worth a Google too. Whatever about Thatcher, the reality is that sport has become all too wedded to grand statements that deflect from its essential purpose — silences, pre-match handshakes, poppies, armbands and anti-racism declarations all clog matchday routines like autumn leaves in a drain.

On the face of it, it seems churlish to quibble with any of them but think of the needless furore whipped up by this episode with Thatcher, the refusal of James McClean to wear that red flower or the times when Wayne Bridge and Anton Ferdinand were supposed to shake hands with John Terry.

All were utterly unnecessary, brought to a head by a slavish devotion to the PC brigade and the need to be seen to do something, anything, instead of devoting such energies to what would be far more meaningful acts away from the spotlight of the world’s great stages.

Sport already does its bit simply by being.

What is sport after all if not a canvas for people to lay aside their differences, to meet on common ground and pit themselves against each other under codified rules of governance that are designed and agreed to by all? Is that not, all in itself, a more powerful statement of intent than any superimposed gesture?

The fact is that the very frequency of all these well-meaning acts serves only to dilute their meaning and Rupert Cornwell detailed a perfect example of just such a principal in his ‘Out of America’ column for The Observer last Sunday when writing about the modern prevalence of patriotic symbolism at American sports grounds.

The presence of military personnel, hangar-sized Stars and Stripes and even the addition of ‘God Bless America’ to baseball’s famed seventh-inning stretch were all understandable after 9/11. Now? To most of the world they look like fading bits of old wallpaper: distasteful and terribly out of date.

Thankfully, such displays of military might and patriotic fervour have not crossed the Atlantic with the alacrity of fast-food ‘restaurants’, shopping malls and the ‘E’ network but the ongoing proliferation of the once rare minute’s silence is an example of similarly good intentions taken too far.

Let us start off by saying there is no right or wrong in this particular minefield, for that is what it is.

Whatever about Maggie, it would be a cold heart indeed that would suggest there has ever been a single person or event undeserving of such a moment’s contemplation here in Ireland.

The problem is where does it end?

A cursory scout through the internet reveals moments of silence, or applause, here for everyone and everything from Kerry’s John Egan and Con Houlihan to the 7/7 London bombings, but it is surely taking things a tad too far to mark something like the Great Famine, as was the case last year.

If there is a general rule for these things — and there quite clearly isn’t — it should surely be that the person or event remembered in this fashion should be a) recent and b) someone or something that touched the heart of the sport in question, or society as a whole.

Then again, both criteria would have supported the FAI’s bizarre decision to have the Ireland national team wear black armbands for an international against Iceland a week after Lady Diana died in a car crash in 1997.

And that is the problem. Where do you draw the line if there isn’t one?

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