More From the World of Sport

               A Sports Minister

During the Asia Cup cricket tournament

the camera dutifully brought into focus

the Minister for Sport of Bangladesh,

the host country.

He was a blandly vicious-looking man,

middle aged and smoothly barbered and somewhat portly,

wearing a well-cut suit and a tie

despite the heat.

He looked as if he might have been

the Minister of Public Works, or Sanitation,

or some other corruption-friendly portfolio,

which may indeed be a part

of his curriculum vitae –

or of his future.

                   It’s Just Not The Same        

Back in the early 1980s my friend Chris and I

used to watch Aussie rules football

on cable TV.

What we liked best were the goal judges.

We’d do their hand signals along with them

with enormous merriment.

What we liked best about their shtick, however,

were their hats –

white, wide-brimmed numbers,

sorta like women’s bowls teams used to wear,

but with the brims turned up in the back.

When the voiceovers advertised

the various teams’ strips for mail-order sale,

Chris and I always hoped they’d offer goal-judge hats also,

but no dice.

The Freeview channel Stratos just started showing Aussie rules

on Saturday afternoons.

I watch by myself,

and the goal judges now wear

baseball-style billed caps in bright colours.

It’s just not the same.

  

                    He Gives A Shit, Right?

Now that food porn

and travel porn

and other sorts of

look-at-what-we’re-enjoying-because-we’re-rich-and-connected-

but-you-can’t-because-you’re-too-poor-and-lonely-

nyah-nyah! programmes

have lost their perverse appeal for me,

it bums me out that the only shows on daytime TV

that I can stomach are sporting contests.

(I don’t include motor sports in this category.)

One of the things that really gets up my nose

is the frequency that players

indulge in lavishly ostentatious

displays of religiosity after scoring:

crossing themselves multiple times,

kissing their fingertips

and pointing them and their eyes upward,

bowing on their knees on the turf

and doing that thing that looks like

they’re cupping some huge animal’s balls –

as if their god takes sides

when grown people play games.

                 Music and Sport

During the England versus Germany

World Cup football match,

when the score had already

reached Germany four and England one,

the TV camera zoomed in on

Sir Mick Jagger

in his undoubtedly choice seat

in the stands.

He looked old and sour

and definitely unsatisfied.

The next day,

watching the Wimbledon TV highlights,

I conceded to myself that, well,

okay, they’re agile and physically fit,

those Slavic bimbos,

but why those repeated shots

of Sir Cliff Richard

in the grandstand

wearing a truly hideous suit?

About a decade earlier,

the sound tech for a play I was in

was popping off backstage

about how no musicians

have any interest in sport,

something that contradicted

my observations from a lifetime

of being around them.

I even could’ve mentioned

Honegger’s Symphonic Movement Number Two,

called Rugby,

but there’s no point arguing

with people like that,

although I did allow myself

to say ‘bullshit’

and nothing more.

               Ask Nadia

As I watched the baby faces

and quasi-erotic posturing

of the competitors

in the Olympic women’s

artistic gymnastics competition

as they wiggled their toned

but almost non-existent tushies

for no gymnastic or artistic

objective that I could fathom,

the phrase ‘exploitation of children’

came immediately into my mind.

All I could do

was to get to my feet,

walk into the kitchen,

and start doing the washing up.

                        A Kiwi Legend

I was in my late forties,

playing basketball for Waitomo

at the New Zealand Masters Games in Wanganui,

as it was spelt then.

Stan Hill, who’d played for the New Zealand national team

for 14 years, nine of them as captain,

and who was then about a dozen years younger than me

and what seemed like twice my size,

pulled down a rebound for the other team.

I jumped up, hands in the air,

obstructing his preferred fast-break outlet pass,

so he unloaded the ball to a guard,

who then hustled it up the court.

Trailing the ball by about twenty metres,

and with all eyes off us,

he slammed his elbow into my solar plexus.

Hard.

It hurt for more than a week.

Masters Games sportsmanship.

He may once have been a legend of Kiwi sport,

but I know that at least after retirement

he’d rapidly degenerated

into little more than a smirking, criminal thug.

                    TV-Only Football Fan

When the free-to-air sports channel was broadcasting

I developed an interest in European football,

and became conversant with

and diverted by

the inanity involved

with the various teams and players competing.

Since that channel went belly up, however,

I haven’t been able to watch

any English or German or European league football,

and I’ve completely lost interest in it,

my eyes glazing over when reports involving

its various teams and players

come on the TV sports news.

     Losing and Getting Beaten

When I was a basketball coach

I always stressed the difference

between losing and getting beaten.

If everybody on the team

played their heads-up best,

followed the game plan,

and played as a team,

avoiding egotistical overconfidence,

they couldn’t lose.

A more skilled team might beat them,

but they wouldn’t be losers.

If they played like shit, however –

haphazardly and without teamwork –

they could easily lose to anybody,

even to teams that had considerably less skill,

and be losers for it every time.

                   My Greatest Achievement

I was the coach of the 1990 Waitomo men’s team

at the Mid-North-Island Division Three basketball tournament.

Expected to go winless,

as Waitomo had done for twelve years,

we started slow but then came on

and won four in a row,

losing out only in the final.

They voted me Coach of the Tournament.

I heard about it later,

since I had gone home to Otorohanga

to be with my family 

– I think my wife, Smoky,

who really didn’t love me and no longer had sex with me,

had something on –

rather than stay in Hamilton for the awards ceremony.

I missed out on receiving more than just public praise.

One of the members of the women’s team,

a little snack cake named Bernice,

who had a strong jaw, a pretty smile, fine legs,

and I don’t know how many kiddies at home

with no daddies to be seen,

had been disappointed at my not being there

for her to provide me with post-function favours.

Maybe this was for the best,

because seeing my own daughters daily

was more important to me

than anything else,

and how the fuck could I know what the consequences

of fucking a woman like Bernice would’ve been?