How complicit are you in sport's great sins?
I ask after coming across an interview with Bob Carmichael last week.
Carmichael worked for NFL Films back in the 1970s, which means if you have watched any of those old-school documentaries with the Oakland Raiders or the Pittsburgh Steelers, the film with its lovely texture and running slowly — sorry if that’s not the technical description — with the turf flying up from the feet of the running backs, you’ve watched some of his work.
Vivid, colourful, with heroic background music and smooth voiceover from a heavily testosteroned newscaster type, it sold American football to generations.
The interesting thing about Carmichael is that he fell out of love with his job because from his vantage point on the sideline he could hear the impact of bone on bone, flesh on flesh, and when he made a documentary about the savage toll the game was exacting on its players, he found himself shunned.
He still watches American football, though, most weekends.
This is interesting. Here’s a man who did more than most to glorify a game that faces serious questions about its treatment of its best players — yet he can’t turn it off when it comes on the television.
How much of that behaviour do you recognise? To what extent does your support help to facilitate toxic behaviours which are either endemic to your sport or incidental to its pursuit?
I’m not picking here on a particular pastime, because there is hardly a sport in the world which can claim to be perfect. At one end of the spectrum one can name pursuits which are so utterly corrupted as to be almost literally beyond help, while at the other you have sports tangled in contradictions and error, sports which must be headed for disaster within decades at most.
If you support a team or a game at either end of that spectrum, then, does that constitute tacit support for the objectionable elements? Most of us tend to flop into a couch or perch on a barstool to watch sport with our morality Geiger counter switched off, and God knows the torrent of unspeakable horror which passes for news these days is enough to let sport just wash over you.
But it’s wrong, unfortunately. I’m sure that as you spread jam over your morning scone the last thing you need is a sportswriter hopping up onto his pulpit to preach, but if you take your particular sport or sports seriously enough to roll your eyes at my pleading, surely you take it seriously enough to want those who are children now to enjoy it when they get older.
That’s why things like the tennis betting scandal matter. Why the judgement to destroy suspect Spanish blood samples matters. Why Sebastian Coe’s stewardship of the IAAF matters. Why Liverpool FC buying houses quietly around Anfield matters.
The challenge is to engage both parts of the brain simultaneously, which few of us enjoy doing. They don’t always play well together, the brain’s mindless pleasure zone or, to use its precise medical term, most of it, and the smaller, snapping turtle-shaped part which raises awkward questions, or, to use its Finding Nemo description, your conscience.
It’s worth running your rationale for offering your support, your shouting and your investments to your favoured team past that smaller part, though, to see if it passes even a cursory examination. After all, it wasn’t Bill Shankly or Vince Lombardi who said you should always let your conscience be your guide. It was someone a lot wiser than either, or both.
Pulling lambswool over our own eyes
Regarding the main part of today’s column... I have indeed noticed that Pep Guardiola is to become manager of Manchester City.
I celebrate the former Barcelona man’s way with a lambswool-v-neck as much as anyone, though I disagree with the tactical insight revealed in a book written by someone with unlimited access to Pep — he believes, apparently, that all field sports centre on overloading one side of the field or pitch so that the opposing defence drifts out of shape to cope on that wing, leaving space on the opposite wing which is then exploited in order to score.
Wrong, but I’ll come back to that.
What I’ve noticed is a lack of attention, since Guardiola’s new posting was announced, being paid to his past. In 2001 Guardiola went from Barcelona to Brescia, and after a few months he tested positive for nandrolone, a banned steroid. Twice.
He was banned for four months but campaigned against the finding. In 2007 the Italian FA exonerated him but then the Italian anti-doping agency reopened the case. He was cleared, finally and totally, in 2009.
Still, those v-necks, eh?
Whistle blown on Paris referee
I caught up with France-Ireland on the recorder Saturday evening, a prior engagement involving Alvin And The Chipmunks Three (The Road Chip) intervened for the live transmission.
It made for extraordinary viewing - not so much the general play as the ineptitude of the referee, Mr Peyer. The fact that replays are available - note the word available, not utilised - makes his mistakes even more unforgivable; the fact that two incidents involved violent foul play rather than underhand technicalities adds to the charge sheet.
How this gent finagled such a high-profile game beggars belief, and any criticism directed his way is likely to come with the traditional caveat attaching to a loser’s disappointment. That would be a huge error, though you wouldn’t be hopeful of it being avoided, going on such precedents as the shameful non-citing of Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu for their assault on Brian O’Driscoll back in 2005.
His performance only goes to underline one of the great overlooked concepts about sports rules: they mean nothing unless they’re enforced.
Dublin didn’t dot the i’s in Dotsy’s case
Not sure what happened with Dotsy O’Callaghan of Dublin night in Thurles - he was taken off, put back on again in what appeared to be a mistake.
I bring this up because this is a classic entry in Haven’t Seen That Before, the bane of an Examiner reporter’s life. Sometimes I’m tempted to run naked across the pitch as the imperative to find Something I Haven’t Seen Before (even though technically, you know, my own body is Something etc etc), and to have one delivered like last Saturday night’s . ..
Just a shame to have missed out on a HSTB classic, folks. Thought I’d share.
