Sport must take a back seat to virus
THE prospect of an entire sporting season being held without spectators is not entirely new.
The Sheffield Shield has been doing it for years, and the AFL teams GWS and the Gold Coast Suns will enjoy a special edge should they play in stadiums where you can hear a pin drop.
My old NRL club the Adelaide Rams did pioneering work in this space back in the late 1990s, with the entire state of South Australia oblivious to its brief existence.
Pardon the cheap gags but in the current climate, if you don’t laugh you’ll cry, I sup
EVERY mother I know has had the “hospital fantasy”.
You know what I’m talking about – a short-lived, pain-free affliction that causes no distress but requires a few days in hospital, basically to put your feet up, read a magazine and say that, no, pose. There is an elitist view that sport is a meaningless pursuit. I am sure there’s a few beret-wearing Brunswick fine art enthusiasts who are guffawing “get a life, plebs!” into their pinot grigio about the prospect of fans being banned from games, or the footy seayou can’t possibly help anyone or do anything because you are in hospital.
Now a version of that fantasy could become a reality, with “self-isolation” set to be the new wellness trend … oops, sorry, a necessary response to coronavirus. son being cancelled.
Well, up theirs.
To rework a line from the great Gideon Haigh about his beloved sport of cricket, sport is the most important unimportant endeavour in our lives. Principally and most obviously, this is simply because it is
Of course, this is a luxury open only to stay-at-home parents with relatives who can help out, or those who have sick leave and thus will be paid through self-isolation.
For casual and contract workers, the thought of not being able to work – and, fun. Having some kind of release is crucial to achieving a happy and balanced life.
It’s also a shared release, a galvanising community action, where aside from the occasional drama of having to deal with a drunken boor or racist loudmouth, it brings people together in an enjoyable way.
At its most profound, sport brings us tales of human strength and bravery, triumph over adversity, and it also gives usually-hostile nations a chance to compete amicably without actually trying to kill each other.
We can look forward to the resumption of sport as we know it some time in the distant future.
Unsurprisingly, the trendies on Twitter were lining up to bag the Prime Minister when he said on Thursday that he was looking forward to attending the footy this weekend.
His comments were derided as indicative of his bogan world view. This was snobby stuff. But the question remains, regardless of whether it’s sport, an outdoor rock concert or a 1000-head dinner at a convention centre, should Australians be erring on the side of caution and avoiding mass public gatherings? And beyond that, should the government be taking the guesswork out of it for us all, by simply stopping such events for a while, as is happening in other countries?
It felt as if the PM with his footy call was trying to show a degree of chutzpah, in the same way other leaders have done after terror events, where returning on holiday to Bali or ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange after 9/11 is a genuine act of defiance against a radical and murderconsequently, not being paid – is terrifying.
But plenty of my officebound mates believe my “working from home” status basically involves sending the occasional email in between swims, coffee with friends and long naps. You can’t blame them – commuting, meetings, office politics and squabbles over fridge space tend to lead to that sort of stultifying and unoriginal thinking.