Sport

Je fauchée ma clavicule à judo la semaine denier; mon médecin mourait. Il n’est pas mauvais, ma fille gagner un prix por joueuse la jour á le foot!

A la semaine prochaine j’appris un nouveau lancer en judo; cette semaine ne pas venir à cause des gobelins du morve.

One of discoveries Sunday’s first excursion into the wonderful world of kiddy football was unexpected side effect of having spent three or so years working on concepts of playing nice (sharing, taking turns and so on), which is the furious, pitiable wailing that accompanies the discovery that in competitive sport you have to take your turn, not wait for it.

Much howling, a mix of self-pitying and righteous indignation, ensued. This is, the coach/referee assured me, entirely normal with three years olds, and I guess it would be. But still: an unexpected side effect; it encourages me in the belief, though, that the whole business is a good thing, not least because while “playing nice with others” is a life skill that’s valuable, so is “I’ll go get it myself, no-one’s going to give it to me.”

Other than that, and a plaintitave “I’m too cold, I want to go home”, swiftly fixed by another layer of jacketing, we had a ball, and Ada managed an absolute gem of a perfectly-executed tackle, timing a textbook interception of another player on his run into her goal.

After the game Ada worked on her dribbling some more, controlling the ball through 90 and 180 degree turns, and frustrating her mother’s attempts to regain control of the ball. I’m looking forward to see how she’ll handle next week.

…players, viewers, and journalists from the part of the world that gives us such stadium spectacles as St Pauli’s, Ultras or such charmers as these Spurs creations, or squabbling over whether it’s worse to play sing-a-long-a-paedophile or mock the dead. None of which quite hold a candle to some charmers from the Netherlands.

But those very same people are such shrinking violets they want plastic trumpets banned?

I don’t watch that much TV any more, although we’ve been getting into the habit of sitting down in front of Country Calendar after dinner on a Saturday; tonight I flicked on the news and was reminded why.

Apparently, the TV tells me, there are serious concerns about the Commonwealth Games being in India after a couple of (small) bombs went off outside an IPL match. Local coverage was wall-to-wall interviews; should we be getting Kiwi players home? Should we abandon the Commonwealth Games?

This is the point where I started yelling rude words at the magic box, which is never a good idea with small ears ready to seize on them for future use, but I am afraid it was that or collapse in an apoplectic fit.

You will remember, of course, how New Zealand didn’t send sporting teams to the UK when the IRA were merrily blowing up bits of Britain. Or how we seriously mulled over whether the United States should ever hold a major sporting event when their domestic terrorists started blowing people up at an Olympic Games. We didn’t stop sending teams to South Africa even when their white government was telling everyone about those terrible ANC terrorists.

Horseshit. We’re happy to have sporting events in harm’s way. We have been for decades. The only “problem” here is that the people running security are brown instead of white.

Peacock Costumes at the Sevens

This was easily the best Sevens costume, originality and cool-wise, I saw from the gaggles of people walking past work and our local coffee spots: Four women dressed as peacocks, with backs covered by a tail of real feathers. Nicely done, and something a bit different.

They’d also spent some time getting the noise of peacocks calling down to a fine art.

I was surprised to see Ma'a Nonu at the A&E with his family. I realised I was surprised because, having been exposed to English footballers and American Grid-Iron players through international press, I had developed, I think, an assumption that all sports players must have the means to dissapear off with their kids to expensive private clinics at a whim, rather than wait with the hoi-polloi. But no, apparently All Blacks do queue up for those worrying first-kid trips to the hospital with the rest of us. And, I hope, discover they're nothing to worry about.

(I can report that Mr. Nonu is something of a doting daddy.)

Vahbiz’s father, Boman Barucha, is not perturbed when asked if rugby is a rather unusual game for girls in India.
“I feel it is only through sports that one learns discipline and caring for others,” he said.
“She is a very hard-working and conscientious girl. We as a family are very proud. It is very difficult even to go on holidays as she doesn’t want to leave the sports ground.”

Indian women’s international rugby team.

When people—particularly snotty Eurosnobs—complain that sport exerts too much of a hold on the New Zealand psyche, that we invest too much in it, that we can’t handle our sports teams losing with any grace or perspective, I look to the old countries, those bastions of civilisations going back into antiquity and… giggle.

One of the common themes I’ve seen from a portion of Kiwis gloating about the All Blacks being ejected from the Rugby World Cup earlier than most people expected goes something along the lines of,

“When I was at school there were the thugby idiots who were bullying arseholes and I’m happy when the All Blacks lose because it upsets people like that.”

Now, I know this particular scenario because I, too, suffered from arseholes at high school. But within a year of leaving high school I realised a few things.

One was that nasty, spiteful, vicious people congregate find an excuse to be horrid to one another for all manner of reasons. If I was a girl who’d gone to an all-girls’ school, I’d have a whole bunch of stories of bullying that would have nothing to do with rugby.

But that’s a minor things compared to the most important point: I like rugby; I liked it at primary school when I played (very, very badly). When I allowed a bunch of arseholes to convince me that rather geeky kids who like Blackadder (not Todd) and math and suchlike had no place caring about rugby, who did I harm by reacting against the worst elements of rugby culture? Them? No, they were happy. They had driven the other away from something they liked. Rugby? Hardly, it’s plenty popular.

No, I harmed myself. I allowed what I liked, what I disliked, what I did and didn’t do to be defined by a bunch of people who were horrible to me for no good reason, and who I hated in turn. I was imprisoned by a bunch of people who barely knew who I was. That’s weak. It’s pathetic.

If you’re twenty years out of high school and you still feel the need to post to the interweb about how happy you are because you imagine some random collection of jerks being upset you ought to feel ashamed. Not because you’re taking pleasure in other peoples’ suffering. But because you’re a sad git who is still being controlled by them and you need to grow the fuck up.