Weekly Lesson: Competitive Sport

For study until 4 August 2024

Audio: On usual social media platforms.

We all can recount stories of our school days and in my life too there were always those awkward moments when it came to competitive sport.

Firstly, at school there were teachers who had a penchant for watching kids running round the entire school complex (approximately 5 miles) twice. The teachers were sheltered under umbrellas, wrapped up in coats, scarves and gloves while we were wearing the obligatory skimpy school uniform for sport, running in the snow. Secondly there was the procedure for selecting players and putting them into teams. The most athletic boy was of course the captain and he got to select his team. It was common practice for those of us who were more academic and less able physically, to be left on the sidelines along with the fat twins whom, of course everyone hated. There were clear winners and losers in this system and I was near the bottom of the list with my new best friends. We enjoyed watching sport, after all we were rarely selected to actually play.

That moment of calling out names for each team was the hardest because I knew I was never going to hear “Joseph, today you will be the goalkeeper”.  I felt like a prisoner in a jail when they have that mail call. As much as you kind of hoped there would be a letter there for you, you somehow knew that it wasn’t going to happen.

I don’t remember my Father ever taking me to sports matches but I do remember being taken by my Grandfather.  I could never fathom why one man wearing red boxing gloves wanted to punch the living daylights out of the other guy and more importantly why Americans referred to that time spent with children at sports matches as “quality time”. If there was anything qualitative about watching a boxing match, I never found it. It was a place full of old men who were wheezing and coughing clutching cigarettes, who seemed pleased to see bloody noses.

On Saturdays I started going to the library instead and soon discovered a clandestine group of kids who were hiding there and studying. They too were bored of “quality time” with family. We didn’t want to be called nerds but we had earned that reputation. Spending time  guessing  the names of  Capital Cities of the world seemed so much more peaceful, these kids knew the meaning of quality. It was fun learning where Moldova was and you would be surprised how relevant that is in my life these days. I also learnt how to solve the Rubik’s cube in minutes. I admit that it wasn’t exactly a crowning moment in the world of sport but it did earn me a reputation, albeit not a positive one.

Sport in 1970s UK was not about competition. It was about learning to hate each other.

George Orwell once said:

 “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.”

I never understood why they wanted to divide us and force us to compete against each other. It supposedly made us stronger but for me and many others it was a very painful time realising that we didn’t fit the mould. Groups of us found solace in books and in our own imagination, we were different. All of us children came from the same gritty economic background, our parents were all miners, iron labourers or factory workers. Some of us knew we were destined for something greater but we didn’t know what. Our parents couldn’t relate to us, they didn’t know how to win us over, kids who weren’t destined for the mines or steel works “how would they survive”?

 Not only were we different from our parents we were different from our older kin as well. My brother knew how to bounce a ball like Pele, enter an old mineshaft without getting caught and  I knew how to play the piano like Richard Clayderman or James Last. Somebody somewhere should have realised there was a problem. For kids like me this was something much deeper than choice of playground, it was something else rising, a new horizon with global promise. It felt magical but made us vulnerable, we were fish out of water, a tribe of misfits sitting alongside a pack of lions who were conditioned in a very different way, waiting to prey on anything weaker.  We avoided confrontation about hating sport, we were outnumbered. It was survival of the fittest. Yet sport was supposed to unite us, it was competitive and had shared vision, winning defeating and building character.

 I watched the Olympic Torch being carried into the Auditorium in Paris yesterday. My heart leapt at the symbology of true sportsmanship, the unity of watching the torch and all that it represents. Something which illuminates and burns away the twisted version from school and raises the standard. A standard which encompasses all people,  disabled, male, female, strong and weak and all the other dualities we have to work our way through.

I’m wondering how the newer generations work through problems like this or maybe the definition of sport itself is evolving to meet their needs. Either way, it took many years for me to find peace about it. In Arabia I found a new hobby in watching Camel racing and returning to the UK have found myself at ice hockey matches, during “quality time” with family.  A far cry from tribal football matches and sectarianism which still sends shudders up my spine.

 I think I understand these things more now than ever before and have definitely found peace about sport.

1. What is motivating you today to study?
2. What motivates you daily to get up and go to work – is it Habit? Money? Targets? Meeting people, burning energy, using positivity, joy level.
3. What is your joy level today – and what raises your joy level?
4. “My Heart Leapt” – When we think about motivation – what does it mean for you?