Kathy Sheridan: Winner-take-all attitude has infected sport

Sometimes sport is hard to like. Take Japan's performance against 500/1-on match favourites South Africa in the Rugby World Cup.

On a heart-thumping September evening the Japanese skipped over history and restored some wonder and romance to international rugby. Their reward ? A game scheduled just four days later, against Scotland, a tier one side making its competition debut. Japan were thrashed.

From every point of view, the four-day turnaround was egregiously wrong. Would Ireland have accepted it? Are you joking?

Romania, a tier two team like Japan, got similar treatment. Beaten by France, they had to front up again just four days later, this time to a tier one side coming out of an eight-day break. That was Ireland, and it worked out very nicely for us.

But where is the fairness ? Where is the sportsmanship? Where stands the “world in union” ethos of the RWC anthem?

Meanwhile, we had the almost routine Croke Park September showdown between Dublin and Kerry. How much did we care, those of us from beyond the Pale or outside the Kingdom, about a toss-up between the two richest teams in the country, reaping success from the best facilities, science, coaching and backroom expertise that money can buy?

Kerry county GAA’s income last year was a whopping €4.26 million. Dublin’s main sponsorship is worth €1million, plus a slew of “partnerships” covering everything from cars to health food to airlines.

Once in a blue moon a Donegal comes along and spoils the script.

Former Donegal manager Jim McGuinness’s column yesterday about the “sacrifices” made by GAA players is worth a read. The lad who went straight from the birth of his child to training camp is deemed to have made a sacrifice ; so is the selector who raced home from a championship match to his son’s First Communion.

Pundits holding forth often sound like their entire tribes have been taken hostage. Truly, if a bunch of women was heard indulging in the same kind of know-all, bitchy exchanges over an entertainment they would be mocked for a lifetime.

Honour

Have we lost all sense of proportion? Sport can bring enormous happiness and pride, but for true sportspeople a win is not a win unless it is achieved with honour and a level playing field.

By facilitating ritual humiliations in the pursuit of big cash bonanzas, sports’ governing bodies show no sense of responsibility to that ethos, still less to children who soak up the standards around them.

The winner-takes-all attitude has infected every sport and age group. The Irish stories range all the way from oafish, contemptuous behaviour at management level down to the crazed adults who run up and down pitch sidelines, roaring instructions at nine-year-olds they fancy as their route to fame or fortune.

The problem in English soccer was highlighted a few weeks ago by Emily Dyke, a 14 year-old referee who used Facebook to ask parents to stop shouting and swearing at her over her decisions. One called her “a f--king disgrace” at an under-8s game. Organisations such as silentsideline.org have been set up to counter the deranged adults.

On the rugby scene the UK Anti-Doping Agency has warned about the prevalence of steroid abuse among rugby-playing boys who want a quick way to bulk up. Can Ireland be any different?

It is difficult now to see any sport as a source of simple fun and entertainment, as opposed to a route to fame and profit. Categories in the new Sports Industry Awards, founded with the purpose of highlighting the contribution of sport to “Ireland Inc”, include “best activation of a sports sponsorship” and “best use of a media platform”.

According to Bernard Brogan, the Dublin football star and face of the awards, the initiative answers "a crying need for an awards scheme that recognises the contribution sport makes to the economic life of Ireland. Too often sport is seen as simply a hobby or pastime. The reality is that it is much, much more."

Baffling

Too often seen as simply a hobby or pastime? Really ? Even if it were true, what could possibly be wrong with that?

That this language comes from an amateur GAA player makes it even more baffling. Isn’t commercial success a reward in itself?

Why not aim for the restoration of sport as simply a hobby or pastime, among parents, coaches and authorities?

And how about some awards for the unsung heroes who, for no gain at all, struggle against the daily tsunami of commerce to engender an ethos of honour and genuine respect in sport, an ethos that will filter through to everything a child does thereafter?

As for Japan, the good news is it gets to host the next Rugby World Cup, the first to be held in Asia. Let’s see how many rest days they get between matches in 2019.