Sport offering a mirror to society and its ills

This was the 20th year I have taught a subject called sports law. Starting out nervously in 1998 at the University of Limerick, I remember giving a public seminar on the topic at the end of which a leading academic in sociology contemptuously summarised that sport was irrelevant, unworthy of academic study, and I should go into legal practice.

My reaction was a bit like that of the Thomond Park crowd to an opposition kicker lining up to take an undeserved penalty — silent, seething, and slightly vengeful.