Sport as a Substitute for Doing Something Else

Well the rugby world cup has come to an end.  I am reliably informed that New Zealand won.  Good for New Zealand, if Australia couldn't win (and it seems that they couldn't) then I'm glad somebody else did.  Otherwise all the players would just be standing around looking stupid.  I'm a little disappointed that Georgia didn't do quite enough to get over the line but there's always next time, assuming the Russians have left any of it around by then.  Somebody has to win these things otherwise, what's the point?  There would be no reason to do a haka for starters.

The Maori haka is awesome when the performers follow it up by risking life and limb on the football field.  I doubt if it would have quite the same resonance if done by New Zealand's synchronised swimming team.  Without football a haka is just a folk dancing exhibition with all that implies in the way of sad, pathetic datelessness.  I was deeply disappointed to see a number of letters and articles in the newspaper (a real one, not the free one I get each afternoon) complaining about the haka.  Apparently these people felt that such a dance with its ritual challenge, aggressive posturing and throat slitting gestures was not quite the sort of thing we should have before thirty powerful, muscular men run onto a field, charge head first at their opponents and try and trample each other into the dirt.  Possibly they would like to have Chilean flute music as a lead in to the rugby instead.

What is it about sport?  Why do we get so excited about it (I'm using the special form of we which means "not me" by the way)?  The "sport as a substitute for war" line is just too tired and self evidently incorrect to have any resonance.  If sport is a substitute for war why do we still have wars?  How many wars have been interrupted so that people can play some sport?  War as a substitute for sport is a little more plausible although it does tend to imply that World War I started because the Austrians and Serbians turned up on a field only to discover that nobody had remembered to bring a soccer ball.

No, the rationale for sport is slightly different.  Sport plugs into three very strong and basic human desires; the desire to associate with other humans, the desire to beat up other humans and the desire of the vast majority to sit on their backsides drinking beer while they watch representatives from the first two do their thing.  I think the last desire is the most powerful.  This is why spectators have to pay to watch while the players actually get paid for turning up at all.

So back to the rugby, or rather, not.  Its over, New Zealand won. We have to wait another four years before the half dozen nations who actually play rugby will compete against each other and a dozen more nations who don't really play rugby but who essentially turn up to add a few extra flags at the venue and attempt to perpetuate the fantasy that rugby has even a fraction of the international appeal of soccer.  In the mean time there's always cricket.