Michael Moynihan: When returning to the stands, don't forget how to behave

An Armagh supporter during the Allianz Football League Division 1 North Round 3 match between Armagh and Donegal at the Athletic Grounds. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Soon you can go back to sports events.

You're excited. I understand that. Favourite team, favourite venue. Favourite spot in that favourite venue from which to watch your favourite team. Soon the comfortable routine will reassert itself and all will be right with the world.

Unless you decide to crown one of the players with a bottle, that is.

Months of sitting at home without the moderating influence of other human beings within two metres may have led to . . . how to put this? An erosion in social norms? A sharp decline in the appreciation of others’ personal space? A loss of impulse control? All of the above?

Some of the evidence coming in suggests that people may have - at best - fallen out of the habits which facilitate the easy mingling of large numbers of people. News reaches me from the States, for instance, that the return of spectators to sports events has not been entirely without incident.

Only last week there were some serious incidents involving professional basketball. Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks decided it'd be a good idea to tease - or taunt - the crowd in New York’s Madison Square Garden. One of the spectators responded by spitting on him.

In Philadelphia, Russell Westbrook of the Washington Wizards got off relatively lightly when a 76ers fan dumped popcorn on him, while the Utah Jazz had to ban three fans for bad behaviour in a game against the Memphis Grizzlies: that behaviour included racist and abusive language directed at Memphis player Ja Morant’s parents, who were at the game.

On top of all that came an incident at the Brooklyn Nets-Boston Celtics game in Boston - a home fan threw a water bottle at the Nets’ Kyrie Irving, narrowly missing the player.

(Department of Fine Detail: the fan was later arrested by Boston police, who revealed he was from Braintree. Brain. Tree.)

There’s a lesson here, and it’s not ‘avoid NBA games after a lengthy lockdown’, primarily because the bad behaviour wasn’t confined to basketball.

In the tidal wave of gush that engulfed us all after Phil Mickelson recently solved the conundrum of global warning - er, sorry, won a golf tournament, many observers skipped past the scenes late in the tournament, when the crowd rushed the green.

(The scenes were oddly reminiscent of disappointed supporters trying to get a junior championship semi-final postponed by ‘rushing the field’, in its time an often-effective tactic.)

Questioned afterwards Mickelson himself said: “It’s an incredible experience. I’ve never had something like that (happen). It was a little bit unnerving but it was exceptionally awesome, too.”

Of course, there are some crowds which don’t even have to get into a stadium to misbehave. In the middle of last month, the Scottish Premier League was finally wrapped up in favour of Glasgow Rangers, leading that club’s fans to...

How did the Press Association open its report on the ‘celebrations’?

“Three police officers have been injured and 20 people arrested after authorities dispersed a large crowd of celebrating Rangers fans in central Glasgow due to ‘rising disorder’.”

Anyway. Back to our own crowd(s).

You would like to think it would be a cold day in hell when people in Ireland have to be reminded not to behave like the fans of Glasgow Rangers in this instance, but it’s probably worth offering everyone a gentle reminder that perhaps the depth of emotion and precise choice of words you feel free to unleash in the privacy of your own home may not be appropriate to a crowd setting.

Just a suggestion. And one I offer in a spirit of generosity. If you think it excessive, consider the man from Braintree. He probably didn’t think when he rolled in to watch his favourite team that he’d end up getting arrested, but he was.

Remember: when you get back to live games, you’re not in your front room anymore. Conduct yourself accordingly.

Staying in your lane is a good idea

I sat down with Derval O’Rourke last week for a chat— you may have seen the result here last Friday, in which she gave a terrific analysis of the Naomi Osaka situation.

One element of our conversation which didn’t make it in was the Tokyo Olympics, and whether they should even take place. O’Rourke sympathised with athletes who might lose out entirely on the chance to appear at an Olympic Games if they didn’t get to participate — but added a significant caveat to her opinion.

“My degree is in business, not in the spread of infectious diseases. To be honest, I don’t know anything about that, so when someone asks me if the Olympics should go ahead, that’s the first thing I say — I haven’t a clue. All things being equal, if the Games can be held safely, great. But that’s not something I feel qualified to comment on.”

It was refreshing to hear someone acknowledge that. The default position with many (spectacularly unqualified) observers is to make the bad-faith appeal to common sense (“I may not have any background in cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional studies when it comes to epidemiology, but still I have opinions”).

You know the type. Avoid like the plague.

Women's sport, the academic side

A public service announcement of sorts. I see Volume 7, No 1 (2021) of the Studies in Arts and Humanities journal is out, and well worth your attention.

Doubtful about something that sounds too dry and academic? Then let me draw your attention to some of the chapters to be found in this edition of the journal.

From Novelty Act to National Association: The Emergence of Ladies’ Gaelic Football in the 1970s; Íde Bean Uí Shé, Cork Camogie’s Feminist Influencer.; Irish Gymnasts on Tour: The Women’s League and Women’s Exercise in 1940s Ireland; and Female Surfers Riding the Crest of a ‘New Wave’ of Irish National Identity

Women’s sport may be getting the attention it deserves belatedly, but an unintended consequence of decades of neglect is the richness of the undiscovered hinterland.

All of the titles mentioned above provide a jumping-off point for an absorbing journey: each of them sounds like the starting point for a documentary that would leave you lost to the world for an hour.

I heartily recommend. For more info try here.

Thinking without the Noise

I’ve written here in the past about the great Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning behavioural scientist who wrote Thinking: Fast and Slow, one of the greatest explanations of how our minds work (clue: it’s all about bias).

Now he’s back with Noise: A Flaw In Human Judgement, a book where he and his co-authors, Cass Sunstein and Olivier Sibony, sift through what affects our judgements.

Want to be frightened? They found that facing a judge in court just before lunch or at the end of a long working day is a tougher proposition than just after lunch or first thing in the morning, when judgements and sentences are more lenient, according to the data.

Hence the noise — the factors which shouldn’t affect our judgement but which still shoulder their way through to do so. Not to be confused with bias, but just as tricky to deal with.

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