'Live' spectator sport has taken a huge knock
Factually, physically, cynically and ironically speaking ‘spectator sport’ once a game now a business, is not or nothing like what it used to be. I focus on football because in my lifetime this (one time) pastime has dramatically changed. Once upon a time Saturday afternoon was dedicated to soccer by my working class dad’s muckers and mates. Locomotive Steamraiser, my dad and his lad (that was me, the lad) would grab a pork pie – to gobble during half time – and trudge up to the Spirites game at our Chesterfield team’s Saltergate ground, pay at the turnstile and elbow and edge the way to a place in the crowd at the home side’s end. O.K. I’ve used nostalgia at its most maudlin memory wise but being a football fan really was special in those days. The ‘Spirites’ once won a football league cup and later beat the mighty Glasgow Celtic or was it Rangers? Now for financial reasons or whatever, they were knocked out of the football league completely. Historically, they were dubbed ‘Spirites’ because the town had the only crooked church spire in the world.
Tempus fugit and sport has leapt from sport and pleasure to hard nosed business and worse. Now coronavirus restrictions (I shall not go on about this lurgi) have changed even the something called ‘live’ action football on T.V. – would you believe?
That mammoth sports stadiums have knocked ‘local pitches’ for six is fact and even the most staunch supporters actually behave like real live spectators and often dedicate their time to cheering their teams from the ‘gogglebox’ huge TV screen in a pub bar. And these ‘supporters’ behave like soccer fiends even further. They rattle rattles and wave wildly at their oversized TV screens. Now with the coronavirus, they can’t even do that! It transpires that the number of ‘live’ pub watchers are limited so they have to go home and watch on the little box. Needless to say, quelque chose!
This we hope is a temporary situation but to realise – over the past couple of months or so – the number of beautiful sporting arenas standing soulless and bare shows what one small if primarily hidden virus can do. The now worldwide image of football is my focal point because of its range. Other sports are being affected almost as sickeningly. Such social sports as tennis, bowls, golf and even boule have been fouled by the necessity to combat this dreaded infectious lurgi.
For an administrative force faced with having to sort the wheat from the chaff in a myriad of international games plagued with health rules must have been and still will continue to be a nightmare. Simplification of mandatory medical protection rules could take weeks, months or even years to provide and administer. The mind boggles at the thought of being responsible for the various kinds of both player and spectator protective ‘separatism’ necessary.
One simple example might quite easily cripple a ‘game’ completely.
At a different level but just as harrowing are the more social sports.
If no more than two people are allowed to play tennis at one time, half the sport is squashed (shuttlecocks might come in handy). Playing singles is O.K. now within stage one but having to organise this is largely impracticable. In the course of a single set several balls are tossed up in the air and clouted from one side of the court to the other so the non-touchy-feely protection ain’t and can’t be there! I could go on. Bowls baffles me even further. Even restricted to two players a match there has to be a 'jack' involved and several 'woods' are delicately rolled from hand to a 'jack' target somewhere on the green sward. I don’t reckon polythene gloves will protect aficionados much from direct contact with other players’ bowls. Don’t tell me these distinctive, white Panama hat crowned enthusiasts use a new 'wood' or give it a disinfectant spray after every shot… so how can the poor sods play? Add golf and sport becomes just a load of delinquent balls… it might be said there’s a balls up somewhere and someone is going to be snookered or not exactly having a ball!
Sure, I know I’m exaggerating but if there is a tennis or bowls club that hasn’t had to give up the racquet or jack in the game(s) recently… I know, I’ve been there and checked! To make ends meet they will probably have to resort to organising scrabble, chess. darts and even tiddlywinks matches to stay in business.
Needless to say without patience and a sense of humour where would any of us be?
I’m glad I gave up cricket, rugby and (more recently) tennis some years ago.
That a few ‘wags’ are decorating their masks in Halloween and cartoon style like my illustration shows proves that we still have our sense of humour! ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you… weep and you weep alone.’ I’m not so sure that I go for that other Monty Python, aphorism, ‘I almost died laughing’ but the odd smile might lighten the present load a littleª
O.K. Back to the real world. I realise that restrictions are already being eased and the virus is being dealt with more than adequately. The Hoi-Polloi (that’s us) are now providing each other with ‘Masquerade’ promenades in and out of supermarkets and mandatory outdoor (in wind and rain swept May) tapas bars where polystyrene is the inword to describe anything we might use to eat or drink out of !
A couple of weeks ago, after fasting on sneaky ‘take-aways’ and microwave meals for some time, I walked down to my nearest local restaurant to dine in the style I have enjoyed for years. I love ‘waiter service’ too. Enthusiastic about tucking into a Moroccan lunch was almost a forgotten treat; but not for long. When I got there I remembered that although eating places had been given some operational Covid-19 leeway I would also have to face the elements and more. Stupidly, I had forgotten that under the current directives lunching at a restaurant or café-bar had to be out-doors. That is to say on a forecourt, patio or terrace outside the ‘dining room proper’ with a limited number of tables allowed. I hate ‘al fresco’ eating but I suffered in personal silence eating and drinking to the edifying music of the passing traffic.
It is only when one is thrust into such a situation that eating in the ‘fresh air’ on the edge of a pavement with thundering long wheelbase trucks, cars and ear-splittingly noisy, baffle-free motorbikes creating a cacophonic symphony, that one wilts.
It could hardly be considered socially enjoyable!
That dog walkers armed with plastic bags aromatically redolent with canine refuse doesn’t improve the scenario either. That the rather delightful, local semi-tropical parkland and the children’s playground just beyond the restaurant had been taped off by the constabulary made ‘getting a breath of fresh air’ at lunchtime a non-starter.
Needless to say, the ‘grin and bear it’ attitude seems to have become the accepted method of coping… until tomorrow.
Malcolm Smith… with two l’s.