Michael Moynihan: War exposing plenty of hypocrisy around sport

One of the fig leaves which has been consigned to the dustbin, if it ever really stood up to much close scrutiny is the old sports and politics not mixing

The Munster team stand for a moments applause in support of the Irish Red Cross appeal to help in the Ukraine Crisis

The savagery in Ukraine shows no signs of abating, so perhaps it’s unseemly to muse on something as inconsequential as the disappearance of a few fig leaves of sporting hypocrisy.

But that seems to be happening as well, and we should discuss it.

The bible text for many people when it comes to sifting through the political implications of sport is George Orwell’s famous The Sporting Spirit, and a flavour of Orwell’s thinking comes early on, when he says, “I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations”.

(Being amazed by suggestions that it creates goodwill within a nation is a regular enough occurrence too.) 

One of the fig leaves which has lately been consigned to the dustbin, if it ever really stood up to much close scrutiny (this fig leaf talk is making me and everyone else nervous - ed), is the old sports and politics not mixing, the last refuge of useful idiots everywhere. See elsewhere on this page for a note on Eddie Howe’s impersonation of a three-year-old child at a press conference last week.

One of the other fig leaves now vanished, though, is the sheer notion of international sport. This was already under pressure, not least because of Russian activity, though this particular activity wasn’t a matter of, you know, killing small children in Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine.

Russia’s state-sponsored doping programme over many years, and its associated cover-up, had already led to its Olympic athletes being banned from competition - but only as Russian athletes representing the country.

In the Winter Olympics lately finished in China, for instance, ABC News reported: “There are 204 Russian athletes competing in the 2022 Winter Games as "neutrals" under the moniker ROC as part of ongoing sanctions imposed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Russia cannot officially send any athlete to an international sports competition until December 2022.” 

This is the kind of Orwellian logic that makes a nonsense of earlier pocket-sized controversies about residency and passports, though it also casts grumbling about athlete eligibility under those headings in a warm nostalgic glow. The ABC report is the sharpest illustration of the death of the idea of athletes representing countries for one simple reason - the two sentences sum up the essential conflict of reasoning involved.

Russia can’t send athletes; Russian athletes can be sent.

As the saying goes, your mileage may vary on whether the Olympics retains any kind of credibility at all. The IOC’s disgraceful behaviour over decades - has there ever been a repressive, authoritarian regime it didn’t quiver in slavish obedience to? - means there’s a grim appropriateness in it being the body to oversee the passing of the national team.

How can you be the representative of a country if your country can’t be represented, after all?

In their own way, the famous Ukrainian sportspeople who have flocked to their country’s banner have underlined the passing of that concept. By identifying what is truly important and acting accordingly, the likes of Vasiliy Lomachenko and Yaroslav Amosov have shown sport’s true importance. 

For further context, Dr Tom Clonan said in these pages last Saturday of his own time as a UN peacekeeper in Lebanon: “I represented Ireland internationally but I wasn’t wearing a rugby jersey. I had an Irish flag on my shoulder but it wasn’t a football pitch. There were no rules. There was no referee. It was absolutely barbaric.” 

Orwell put us on the right track all those years ago. Should we extrapolate anything from the fact that he wrote his famous piece in the wake of a tour of England by Dynamo Moscow, champions of Russia, in November 1945?

Howe is life in Sportsworld?

The reverberations from what’s happening in Ukraine continue to be felt in all sorts of different ways. One side effect has been the strange sight of sports pundits suddenly being put on notice to come up with something a little more substantial, not to mention sports figures themselves.

This was neatly exposed in a press conference featuring Eddie Howe, Newcastle United manager, during the week.

Howe was asked if he had any concerns regarding the possibility of sanctions against Newcastle’s Saudi owners given Roman Abramovich is selling Chelsea and Everton have suspended their ties to another Russian, Alisher Usmanov.

“I’m not going to predict what people will do, I’ll only react to clear facts that I have in front of me,” said Howe.

“I think commenting on things like that is not relevant to me.” 

If you live in Sportsworld, where Howe functions merely to explain and account for Newcastle’s comings and goings, their wins and losses, this is perfectly reasonable. He’s paid to manage the team.

If you live in the real world, this is completely unreasonable. Howe is the visible face of a sports team whose owners, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, are regarded with a great deal of suspicion due to the country’s human rights record.

It’s entirely reasonable to ask Howe, a grown man, for his views on that issue and to expect a sensible response. Perhaps Howe hasn’t given any thought to the subject; perhaps he has a lot of strong opinions on the subject but doesn’t want to share those; perhaps his opinion is that the Newcastle owners have nothing to do with his day-to-day work.

Whatever reason is applicable it would be interesting to hear it, and to hear how someone explains that kind of situation to themselves. Because, as suggested above, those kinds of questions are likely to pop up at more and more press conferences.

Warne was Mr Australia

For even a cricket agnostic whose only connection with the game is a long-standing obsession with the TV series Bodyline, the passing of Shane Warne over the weekend at the age of just 52 came as a shock.

As an indication of his standing in his own country you only had to look at prime minister Scott Morrison’s statement: “He was one of our nation’s greatest characters. His humour, his passion, his irreverence, his approachability ensured he was loved by all. In recognition of Warne’s national achievements, his family will be offered a state funeral. This will be done in consultation with the Warne family.”

Warne’s swagger and confidence seem particularly Australian; how many times did they work ‘larrikin’ figure in the obits? So it seems appropriate to mark his passing, and what he embodied, with a state funeral. Particularly as sports mail-out The Upshot proved over the weekend that the first page of Warne’s autobiography is the greatest opening to any sports book ever written.

Commentary on Munro

Hard to move past a book of Margaret Atwood’s non-fiction this week. Atwood is enjoying a new vogue thanks to The Handmaid’s Tale morphing into event television in the last couple of years, but she’s always been a treasure to her many fans.

Looking forward to getting into this one, with an essay on the great Alice Munro, the other Canadian writing superpower, touted in some quarters as the best commentary to be found on that writer. Recommended.

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