Call me a heretic and a national traitor, but I wasn't in the least bit bothered about the rugby world cup final. Nor would I be bothered about the cricket, tennis, snooker, grand prix, golf, olympics; nor in fact any other sport which might be in the public eye at any time.
The thing sports fans don't get is that being interested is something you have to work hard at. They don't get it because most people have been watching sport all their lives, and have over the years accumulated a great wealth of knowledge which they now take for granted. I don't even know the rules of rugby, let alone the names and strengths of the current players. I would have to make a special effort to learn all that stuff before I could understand what was going on.
Some sports are better for people like me than others. Football, for example, is quite good for me to watch, because the tactics and skills involved are very clear from the positions of the players on the pitch; football is about geometry. In rugby, I could tell who was winning, and I could appreciate the speed and strength of the individual players, but I would not be able to discern any strategy; as far as I can tell, all they do is run at each other very fast, like a game of British Bulldog where one person has to carry a ball. Cricket, for those outside of the loop, is utterly indecipherable, a repeating cycle of hit the ball, catch the ball, with apparently nothing of interest going on.
Don't get me wrong: I think sports are great - as things to play - and I cannot deny that people enjoy the watching of sport a great deal. It is the importance of sport which I believe is overrated. Sport is elevated above its station because people perceive it as 'real': there are real people out there really competing, and sometimes the prize is a lot of money, so they think it must be important. The proportion of our news media allocated to sport bolsters the perceived importance of the subject. Sporting events, wars and other disasters are given equal credence. People believe sport is important because they are told it is important, and so they get all excited about it.
In truth, sport is no more and no less than an improvised soap opera. It has characters with histories and is packed with drama and intrigue. It provides people with plenty of things to have opinions about which don't require too much brainpower to understand, and events to look forward to. For me to watch a single rugby match now would be like watching a single episode of Hollyoaks - I wouldn't know what was going on and it would seem boring and, frankly, a bit shit. If you watch Hollyoaks a lot, you will know the characters and the plot threads and the whole thing is (theoretically) more enjoyable. If the plot of Hollyoaks was reported in the news, perhaps we would see pubs full of Hollyoaks fans, cheering the nice characters, booing the nasty ones, maniacally whooping and hugging each other when a character gets laid.
Ah, maybe not.
The reason I am whinging is simple. I get fed up with the aghast codfish gapes of people who find out I didn't watch whatever match and I have never heard of such and such a player. Of course I didn't and of course I haven't. One may as well be shocked I didn't watch Hollyoaks yesterday and don't know the name of that blonde girl who posed in her pants for FHM.
I have never watched sport properly and have no interest in doing so and moreover there is no reason why I should be interested - sport is not important, it achieves nothing useful and says nothing worth hearing. Other people enjoy it, and that is fine. I enjoy different things, and that is fine too. Just please don't tell me it is important, because that gets on my tits.
Ranting humanist.
