Twist Again Like We Did Last Summer Dance
I'k showing my age, but does everyone remember Chubby Checker? Ah, you practise. No, not the Welsh prop forward from the 1970s.
The American singer, frequently referred to as the begetter of 'the twist', a dance style that came out of Chubby's hits 'The Twist' (1960) and 'Let's Twist Again' (1961).
I was thinking of Chubby the other day, when reading even so another contortion in the coverage of the Irish rugby team.
In 2017 and 2018, the Irish gaelic rugby team (aka The People'due south Team) were world-beaters. Let's twist again: bring on the Earth Cup, we'll crush information technology.
In early 2019, we ship losses at home to England and abroad to Wales. Let's twist again: ah, well, turns out we're still fairly crap.
In August 2019, we are hammered by England. Let's twist again: no point in even going to Japan.
Nosotros (The Team of Us) beat Scotland well in the first game. Let's twist again: nosotros might make the last, who knows?
We (The Team of Them) are turned over past Japan and have an uninspiring win confronting Russia.
Allow's twist once more: we might as well become habitation.
Dizzy yet? I am.
This isn't pushback against rugby or its coverage, both of which I love. Information technology appears that in all sports, there is now nowhere between being earth beaters or being total losers.
Everything balanced or moderate or considered or fun in sport is beingness sucked out by a large black hole.
If there's i recent trend that gets on my goat, it's THE Goat (Ed: curmudgeon alert).
THE Goat and its cranky cousin THE WOAT (sad about the capital letters, I know they crusade headaches) are sure signs that the extremist algorithms in our phones accept leaked into our heads.
Nosotros are undergoing mass conversion to the cult of WIN BIGLY OR NOTHING! (concluding time, I hope).
Merely sport isn't really about winning at all. That's a myth. The pervasive experience in sport is losing.
Joyce Carol Oates (in her exquisite volume On Boxing) writes about the pyramid of winning and losing. There is only one at the top, only many, many, losers on the fashion down, 'shading out into the anonymous subsoil of humanity'.
In a tennis tournament with 120 players, 119 will lose. That's over 99% of losers to less than 1% of winners. In an aristocracy championship — say Wimbledon — for every player who makes it at that place, another 200 serious players have non. So, in fact, for ane winner (there tin can only exist one), there are 23,999 losers.
Information technology gets worse if you include the millions watching. We, the fans, participate in championships, too. They wouldn't exist without us and our (unfulfilled) childhood dreams of playing in them.
The point of this isn't to rub noses in the fact that virtually everyone in sport is losing. The point is that it doesn't matter.
The point is that at that place's a game and something wonderful and mysterious is happening inside information technology. The Ancient Greeks chosen it the agôn, or struggle, and they built fine art around it.
During the game, something is also happening within us, and that something is the whole point of sport. It's more than enough and zip else matters about as much.
Addendum: Kudos to the shocked Irish gaelic fans in Shizuoka, last Sat calendar week, and the magnanimity they showed to the weeping Japanese supporters. Turns out we're not all losers afterward all.
Au contraire, as Samuel Beckett replied, when asked if England were going to win the Rugby World Cup.
Oh, let's twist again: twisting fourth dimension is here.
Park your entitlement nearly Cork bainisteoirí
All-time of luck to all the new managers, selectors and coaches who volunteered to have over the Cork hurling teams for 2020.
I'm in awe of these people.
Now, I'm sure, come next summer, I'll exist whingeing, forth with many others, at team selections and tactics just, before I do, I might just park my sense of entitlement for a moment.
Entitlement to being entertained, being inspired, existence thrilled, being emotional, beingness filled with wonder by hurling, year in and year out – game in and game out.
We are privileged in the county of Cork (and in other counties) to have so many willing, qualified and energetic people to develop teams and fix them as well as they perchance can.
I haven't earned the correct to be disparaging, either of the County Board or their choice of managers, selectors and coaches announced last week.
Have yous?
Staying angry and loud well-nigh cheating in sport
I'one thousand not easily shocked anymore. Living with those two tow-headed (natural or not) gobdaws in Impeachland and Brexitland would inure the touchiest of souls against outrage.
But when it comes to cheating in sport, nosotros have to muster our acrimony and indignation every single fourth dimension, to counter whatever possible fatigue or normalisation.
Hence the grim satisfaction at the four-twelvemonth ban of Alberto Salazar for 'orchestrating and facilitating prohibited doping deport' this week. If just it were a lifetime ban.
Hopefully, information technology will bring an finish to his involvement in sport — that his 'brand' volition be so toxic as to deter any athlete from associating with him in hereafter.
And hopefully it will facilitate a continued spotlight on adulterous, in all its forms.
Sport is a form of play, which we first acquire to do as babies when we look into our mothers' smiling optics and smiling back.
In playing sport (note the verb), nosotros enter into a solemn contract that nosotros will follow the rules of the game (notation the noun).
If we don't — if we cheat — we are no longer playing and what we are doing is no longer sport.
When cheating happens, sport doesn't be whatsoever more than. Cheating doesn't demean sport, adulterous obliterates it.
Cheating renders sport into something else entirely, something far closer to George Orwell'due south view, that it is 'a training basis for elitist bullies who would proceed to use their experiences within sport to promote violence and conflict in afterward life.'
A view I don't accept, even so wonderful Orwell's prose happens to be.
The truth about men and about masculinity
The book that blew me abroad this twelvemonth was Amateur, a memoir by Thomas Page McBee.
Information technology recounts how he — a transgender man — fought in a boxing match in Madison Square Garden in 2015. The volume has taught me more nearly masculinity than anything I've read, heard, or experienced earlier.
He writes almost his opponent: 'The truth was, I loved him even as I danced effectually him with my hands in the air.' The purity of revelation in that statement floored me.
Nosotros have a lot to learn about men and sport and McBee's experiences provide stunning perspectives and insights.
Please send suggestions for books almost masculinity on the back of a humidity-stained Shota Hori jersey (IN Capital LETTERS ONLY) to Tadhg Coakley c/o The Irish Examiner.
Source: https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/othersport/arid-30955338.html
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