Latest news on the car radio on the short, extremely short, soon to be extremely shorter, drive into the office this morning was that in Adelaide Australia the England cricket team have been beaten in the second of five test matches against, well, Australia of course.And here in the UK it raises just one comment from 99% of the population - "oh dear" - then we get on with what we were doing before we switched on the radio.
Other populations all over the world wonder why our country's representative teams in any sport are always convincingly beaten whenever they travel anywhere out of the country, to which the answer is, we don't really care to be honest.
Sport is not at all important in this cuontry, its not a measure of our standing in the world, it means nothing to our national image, we couldn't give a flying fook when our cricket, rugby, football, athletic teams get mercilessly pounded to defeat in some other part of the world, it raises only the slightest of eyebrows and an "oh dear" and then we laugh and think "fookin useless bas'tads", and move on.
When Australia lost their cricket series here in the UK last year there was talk of the team not returning to Oz as their lives may be in danger from the distraught population for whom defeat at any sport means that you are finished as a nation, sport is the one thing that the Aussies do well and they cling to the idea that they will one day dominate the world at everything else by being good at hitting a small leather ball with a shaped and well oiled piece of wood.
Likewise the population of New Zealand go into 14 days of mourning when their All Black team is beaten at rugby, especially if they are beaten by Australia, no work is done at all for 14 days and the defeated team members are forced to walk over hot coals and stick pins in their eyes as punishment for the ultimate dishonour to their nation.
We all know just how important it is for the USA to dominate the sporting world, its so important that they have invented sports that only they will play so that no other nation can claim their "World Series" crowns, and its so important to win the most medals at each and every athletics meeting that many of their competitors carry health warnings for innocent citizens not to stand downwind of them when they urinate in public lavatories.
To us Brits it means fookall.
We don't do sports in schools because its not important to win and we don't want our little darlings to be brought up in an atmosphere where "win at all costs" is the motto rather than "its the taking part that matters", finishing last is a fine and noble art and we are good at it.
Those gold medals aren't made of gold anyway and to be honest they look like so many "Jim'll Fix It Badges" - we did Jimmy Savile in the 70's and he's a bit passe now.
4 comments:
A teacher I know brought in prizes for the winners at sports day. The head protested and said all the kids should get a prize, or the winners will think they are better than the rest. Isn't that the definition of a winner?
So why is it that we're "good at losing"? Is it because we're more grown-up and mature as a nation? Or is it because we've got so used to being beaten at just about everything over the years that we don't care anymore?
Unfortunately, I suspect it's the latter.
And anyway, the reason we're losing in Australia is because they've put a Lancastrian in charge.
We're years ahead of the rest of the world, one day all countries will think like us and the Olympic games will award medals to everyone who can be bothered to find their way to the stadium, only the Aussies will still care about who wins, and we'll still laugh at their eagerness to impress us all by hitting a little ball with a stick while wearing long white trousers - its not a sport if you wear long trousers.
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