Sports

What a coincidence that the assignment to undertake a piece of sports writing fell just at the beginning of football season- a time when I, a person who shuns all involvement with sports, find myself sitting patiently in the living room reading a book while my son and his father watch the game, and on Saturday, while waiting for the Rugrat at his first day at football training, find myself penning the following (admittedly rather self-indulgent) poem for my poetry class:
Aussie Rules
Saturday morning sleep-ins
are not the prerogative
of virtuous Australian parents-
no;
to be a Proper Australian Parent, one must:
rise early on the Sabbath
to feed the troops a breakfast of champions,
clothe the little warriors
in the tribal colours
with studded shoes and tall, striped socks
(all washed and ready the night before),
and, on the wet, green field, every Saturday,
join the other Righteous Parents
in denying themselves
the beds they yearn for,
ignoring the cranial throbbing
for coffee yet un-percolated,
and shutting out the distant memory
of Saturday-morning sex
for this great and noble common goal:
the initiation of our sons
into the cult of the Australian male
(the war-paint, the brotherhood, the bloodlust,
the bonding, the validation, the identity)
so that our sons may follow
in their fathers’ footsteps
and spend their Sundays on the sofa
watching football,
drinking beer,
and being men.

Okay, so I’m a cynic. The world of sports just isn’t my world. And yet… there is something about sports movies that infects me, just for that hour, with the passion fans must feel. Our lecturer says that sports create an Imagined Community. That sounds wonderful. Am I missing out on something really, really important?
It’s not that I have something against sports. Theoretically, I think it’s wonderful that our nation idolizes such a healthy and innocent past-time. Sports are a great equaliser in Australian society; many indigenous children see it as their only level playing field with non-indigenous Australians. I truly value the community sports provide for our children- playing sports is one of the very few things a child in our culture can do that adults take seriously. To be playing a game with your parents cheering you on, and then to go to a game and see all the grown-ups on their feet, screaming with excitement, allows children rare access to be part of something that actually matters in the grown up world. I get that. I love that. But none of this touches me. What can I write about sports?
As is my habit when procrastinating on an assignment, I’m randomly surfing the web, telling myself I’ll begin after I read these cool Hunter S Thompson quotes. Following random rhizome trails, I come across this startling fact: Hunter S Thompson was a sports writer! Really? This I must see! Bless the Internet, it’s easy enough to find. http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=1996511 And it’s delicious Thompson, with plenty to delight the temporal lobe as usual, but it doesn’t lure me into the fold. I gobble up the goodies and ignore the sports, which happen to be the whole point of the articles. My quest to understand is not going well.
I am not easily bored. I can sit in the garden and study ants marching across the lawn; I listen to ABC Classic FM and watch parliament Question and Answer time. But somehow, I cannot bear to sit and watch a football game. I cannot make myself care about those men in shorts chasing a ball, I cannot fathom what it feels like to care which team kicks it through the posts more times. What is missing in my brain? I think the answer was given in class, when the lecturer explained that sport is a local phenomenon. Having spent my childhood in seven different countries, raised by parents who never watched or spoke about any form of sport, I just haven’t been indoctrinated. I wasn’t surrounded with the imagined community. And to an alien like me, it really is just a bunch of men chasing a ball. No big thoughts, no clever dialogue, no artistic value. It’s a language I don’t speak, a party I’m not invited to. It’s all right. I’ve got that book to get back to.