Being a real sport is not my thing

The South African obsession with outdoor sport is well-documented and pretty clear-cut, considering it’s the one area we tend to dominate on a global scale – illiteracy rates and corruption levels notwithstanding.

This fervour, while admirable in tackling our ever-rising obesity and diabetes rates, does, however, come with its setbacks.

Injuries and concussion? Sure.

But the concerns I have with sport are more time, cost and annoyance related.

And it all starts at the school level. I believed, in all my impressive ignorance, that once your children emerge from the hellscape that is the baby and toddler phases, you would get to sleep in on the weekends and have a lot more free time to drink vino and binge-watch murder mysteries.

Instead, I find myself being dragged out of bed every Saturday morning and traipsing to the dodgiest parts of town to watch a bunch of unathletic eight year olds running after balls of various shapes, with concussion-inducing weaponry in their hands and menace in their eyes.

And this isn’t once every so often, it’s every Saturday no matter how hopeless your child clearly is at sport.

Have you ever tried to make small talk with a religious leader on a Saturday morning with a raging hangover?

Well, I have and I think I inadvertently joined a cult.

That’s not the worst of it. Did you know you have to pay for equipment for all this compulsory sport they simply have to do?

It doesn’t matter if they’re playing in the D team, you still have to fork out for bags, bats, balls, ball boxes, ball bag boxes … it never ends. And it changes every season!

Someone needs to explain to me how cricket pads for an eight year old are somehow more expensive than for an adult man. Surely there’s less material used, which should translate to a lower price?

I would’ve thought that was basic economics, but when it comes to kids, retailers can slap any price on an item and you just gotta pay or you don’t love your children. It’s emotional retail.

Kids also need more equipment than we ever did.

If you were a goalie, you wore some 30-year-old kit the school supplied that was growing its own ecosystem.

You didn’t take stainless-steel water bottles filled with ice cubes because your parents told you drinking water while playing sport would give you a stitch.

Instead, you sweated it out on the field in 40 degree Zululand heat and then all lined up at the tap to drink hot municipal water out of a carcinogenic hosepipe. If you were really lucky, you got an orange slice thrown at your head as well.

Nowadays, children have to wear gum guards whether they’re playing hard-ball hockey on smooth Astroturf or soft-ballcock badminton in the sand, otherwise they’re sent off the field in shame.

I never wore a gum guard my entire high school career despite playing on a grass field with mole hills bigger than Krakatoa. If someone wasn’t knocked unconscious with three teeth missing at least once in the game, your coach considered you not giving 100%.

And then there are the parents. Good gracious! A generation of underachieving nobodies who wouldn’t know the offside rule from hockey ball in the face, all shouting inane instructions from the sidelines.

These entitled millennials are all raising children who they believe are ‘exceptional’ and ‘gifted’ - despite my repeated assurances that they aren’t.

There are maybe a handful of children who will go on to play in a professional league, and even then they won’t be making a lot of money. And let me tell you, none of these people are playing in my kids’ teams.

Any coach who wants to drop a child from the A team in schools these days needs a bodyguard, a sturdy ball box, and blessings from their favoured deities.

Unless they are, of course, dropping my child from the team, which means Friday afternoon matches enjoyed with gin and tonics on the sidelines.

I’d convert for that.