Boring boors who bash women’s game miss the point
You’ve probably heard a version of that criticism yourself: women’s sport is boring, who’d want to watch that, men’s sport is real sport. The usual nonsense.
Marcotte pointed out the attractiveness of the word ‘boring’, however, as the crucial weapon in the critics’ lexicon: they “love to fling around the word boring, both because it’s hard to argue back against a subjective assessment and it implies that anyone who watches the game is doing so out of some kind of political duty instead of pleasure.”
This sums the situation up very neatly: clearly one person’s switchback ride of enthralling events is another’s stupefying soporific. What bores you, I find gripping, and vice versa. There’s an interesting philosophical point that could be teased out here about how much of the sporting experience any of us, as observers or fans, actually enjoy: the build-up, the anticipation, the goal, the uncertainty, the afterglow, the appreciation. Break those down and where specifically does the pleasure come from? On a parallel track you could also make the argument from the healthy genre of books spawned by Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch or Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes - specifically about men’s niche obsessions - that there’s a sadomasochistic tinge to following a sports team: that not enjoying the experience is what validates it and gives it substance. Difficulty generates meaning: we all remember that from our literary theory.
When it comes to women’s sport there’s another angle to the discussion one sometimes glimpses, and that’s the fool’s pardon given to those who ‘aren’t politically correct’, the kind of wilful contrarians who delight in ‘stirring it’.
This is where Marcotte’s point about feeling one has to show cause with women’s sport is particularly acute, even if you allow for the fact that the mouth-breathers who deploy the ‘I suppose we’ll all have to stop celebrating Christmas next’ defence are generally trying to mask their own stupidity.
None of which means everyone is now singing from the same hymn sheet, or even operating in the same century. Last Saturday in these pages Eoin O’Callaghan pointed out a cringe-inducing description of US star Alex Morgan, one which included this: “a talented goalscorer with a style that is very easy on the eye and good looks to match”.
The outlet where this appeared?
The official FIFA website.
Coming soon, some slavering over Lionel Messi’s knees.
The joys of the GAA traffic tailback
Mentioning last Saturday takes me back to New Ross. Ever since places like Fermoy were bypassed by the Cork-Dublin motorway, many of us have craved our fix of the GAA traffic tailback, and the sweet, sweet experience of looking at the exhaust pipe in front for half an hour or more.
All credit then to the fixture arrangements which led anyone travelling from Cork to Wexford last Saturday for the hurling qualifier between those two counties through a town which was having a) a festival b) a concert and c) a fireworks display.
All on the same evening.
Going up wasn’t too bad. The way back? Suffice to say that the man taunting the press box with a 1798-era map which sketched a coastal coach road that might avoid New Ross would have made a tidy profit if he’d put ownership of that map out to public tender, but the dread didn’t match the experience. It was well into Sunday by the time I turned the key in the door.
Muddy racing hard to digest
There’s always a next thing, isn’t there? Always something else. Marathons, which get overtaken by triathlons, which are superseded by ultra-marathons, and which in turn are left trailing by these ‘tough mudder’ races, which, for the uninitiated, consist of hauling yourself around a muddy, obstacle-strewn course.
And then spending a lot of time in the toilet, apparently.
Reports from southern France last week outlined how 1,000 — one thousand! — of the 8,400 participants involved in the Levens Mud Day on June 20 reported symptoms of acute gastroenteritis.
The stomach ailments consisted of diarrhoea, vomiting and fever for the most part and are believed to have been caused by norovirus, a highly infectious disease that causes an inflammation of the stomach or intestines.
This is a disease usually transmitted through contaminated water or food or by touching contaminated surfaces, but it’s not exactly clear how these runners contracted it.
(At this point I would strongly advise you to put the black pudding to one side.) Some of the doctors who’ve treated the runners, however, have said their patients told them they didn’t eat any food at the event, so it’s possible they may have accidentally ingested mud contaminated with the virus along the race course. Some of those runners have taken to Facebook to complain that sections of the course smelled distinctly of horse manure, so one could therefore deduce… I won’t finish the point. A little like you and your breakfast, eh?
A joy to behold horde of pitch invaders
Before leaving Wexford, which I didn’t think I’d be able to do in reality on Saturday night (please, enough, you’re not the first person who ever sat in traffic you know - everybody), a word about the pitch.
Not the quality of the terrific surface but the mass invasion by hundreds of kids before the game and again at half-time. It looked like a health and safety nightmare and utter chaos, by which I mean a joy to behold, but as soon as the announcer requested a clear space for the players, everybody left. Immediately. No heavy-handed, or even light-handed, stewarding required. As they used to say, all other institutions please copy.
