For reasons to banal to repeat here, I noticed recently I haven’t made a significant entry about sport on this site for well over two years. I began to ponder the reason and realised that, at least by way of generalisation, I’ve become quite disenchanted by the professional sporting world. There are clearly some sporting specifics, and then there are the stories that some would say are peripheral to sporting excellence but for me are symptomatic of a deeper malaise.
So here is an off the cuff, simplistic and therefore far from cohesive, cogent and well constructed exposition for my increasing disinterest in the sporting calendar. There would be many other examples if I trawled back through my memory banks, but for now these will do.
First up, there’s the typical fan disappointment around the continued failure of the Blades and as we look at the bottom of the league below, this season has hardly got off to a very auspicious start.
| 21 | Coventry City | 4 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 4 | -3 | 2 | |
| 22 | Rochdale | 4 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 6 | -3 | 1 | |
| 23 | AFC Wimbledon | 4 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 7 | -4 | 1 | |
| 24 | Sheffield United | 4 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 7 | -5 | 0 |
As usual, we have responded to a fairly poor campaign by replacing our manager without any accompanying change in Board attitude, recruitment policy or ambition. The Board appears to have settled on a business model that provides it with a profit, and as long as 20,000 fans are prepared to turn up every fortnight to watch appallingly poor football, the owners of the club appear to be more than content. It’s not so much the failure, it’s the contempt in which the supporters are held that really galls. It’s a sad day when we have to accept that we have found our level, and that level is League One.
We had the sorry and desperately depressing Ched Evans saga, when the bile emanating from the Twitter Neanderthals proved that misogyny and hypocrisy are alive and well in certain sections of the fan base and that both football clubs and some supporters are prepared to scrape the bottom of the ethical barrel in order to turn a buck or buy a few goals – hold your collective head in shame, Chesterfield FC. In addition, we have the football media prepared to turn a very blind eye to all kinds of narcissistic and crass behaviour that wouldn’t be tolerated by any individual who didn’t offer the promise of the odd goal up front for club and country. And then on the pitch, we had the dubious pleasure of another ridiculously inept England campaign in the European Championships, culminating in the Iceland game, when collectively and individually, the team proved incapable of mastering even the most fundamental footballing techniques. This, from so called skilled technicians who command a minimum of £70-100,000 per week for their so called professional expertise.
Then we were all looking forward to the Olympics, only to be floored by the various drugs scandals, including the systematic state sponsored cheating in Russia; only to be let down by the IOC decision not to ban the whole Russian team from the Rio games, something which at least the Paralympic Committee have had the guts to do. I still caught a fair amount of the Olympic coverage and still had just enough faith in the system to enjoy the GB achievements, including the wonderful Jo Pavey, competing purely for the love of competition in her chosen sport – so please let our cycling team, Mo and all the others be clean. Failed drug tests for any of our success stories would probably kill off what little faith I have left.
And we still have Andy Murray. A fantastic summer, a superb second Wimbledon title and a retention of the Olympic title. I’ve said this before but its worth repeating. Tennis players can play three or four hours to get through one match and often return to the court the next day and do it all again; Murray had to win seven matches in two weeks to take the Wimbledon title; and yet still we have to listen to football managers and players moaning about the draconian injustice of having to play two ninety minute eleven a side matches in the space of seven days. We must all surely recognise how devilishly difficult it must be for them! So thanks to Andy, Jo, Justin, Max, Mo, Jessica, Bryony and all the rest for demonstrating the joy of competing at the highest level. I just wish I could hear a little less about the sacrifices that sports men and women make to “follow their dream”. It makes me realise that throughout my whole adult life I’ve apparently been misusing words such as ‘hero’ and ‘sacrifice’, rather assuming that the latter was the giving up of something especially for the sake of someone else or for the greater good, not furthering what is in essence your own self-interest.
That, in less than a pompous nutshell, is why I find it increasingly pointless to muse on sport any more!