Skip to main content

"..but how you played the game"

As a Scotland supporter, I know the pain of defeat better than most.

The defeat of English footballers in Russia was not pleasant (Even for me- Russia is one of the few countries where I would happily cheer on England).

The likely defeat of the Red Rose in Rugby inevitably followed- and of course, naturally the players were disappointed to fall at the last rung of the ladder they had climbed.

The reaction of some England supporters was not pleasant- and that of the press even worse. At the end of the day, the virtues of sport are not always in the winning.

Likewise the failure of Lewis Hamilton to win the Grand Prix World drivers championship in his rookie year has been greeted with screeds of maudlin drivel from the press.

So instead of a quiet pride in the achievements of the underdog English Rugby team, and the Rookie driver, there is a palpable sense of anger and frustration in England this morning- this is not what sport should be about at all: it is ugly and wrong.

Must all the Corinthian virtues of Rugby Union be sacrificed on the alter of greed, commercialism and the idea that winning in sport is everything and losing is nothing. What happened to the sense of respect and fair play that motivated the founders of the sport?

It is not a healthy society where couch potato supporters feel defeat more keenly than the committed, disciplined players, who really understand the virtues of their sport.

PS ...and don't get me started on the petulant way that several French players refused to play in the bronze medal match: As the Pumas delivered another convincing victory I did at least raise a cheer for their Corinthian spirit...

Comments

Anonymous said…
"The reaction of England supporters was not pleasant" - I think this would read better with the addition of the word "some", Cicero.
Cicero said…
I thought I had written that- now corrected

Popular posts from this blog

Post Truth and Justice

The past decade has seen the rise of so-called "post truth" politics.  Instead of mere misrepresentation of facts to serve an argument, political figures began to put forward arguments which denied easily provable facts, and then blustered and browbeat those who pointed out the lie.  The political class was able to get away with "post truth" positions because the infrastructure that reported their activity has been suborned directly into the process. In short, the media abandoned long-cherished traditions of objectivity and began a slow slide into undeclared bias and partisanship.  The "fourth estate" was always a key piece of how democratic societies worked, since the press, and later the broadcast media could shape opinion by the way they reported on the political process. As a result there has never been a golden age of objective media, but nevertheless individual reporters acquired better or worse reputations for the quality of their reporting and ...

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...

One Year On

  Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas, ...