Denis Walsh: Moral outrage concerning sport is selective, impressionable and flighty

At a press conference in the build-up to last week’s international friendlies, Stephen Kenny was asked about his intention to attend the World Cup in a way that invited him to justify his actions. He made it clear that this was a scouting mission, to watch Ireland’s up-coming group opponents in the Euro qualifiers and that he wouldn’t be dilly-dallying in Qatar a moment longer than necessary. Without using the terms directly, he made a deliberate distinction between business and pleasure: he would be going to the World Cup in the line of duty.

In passing, though, he raised an interesting question: “Where do you draw the line?” He might also have asked: Who draws the line? Why does the line keep moving? Who moves it? How?

The crisis of conscience about this World Cup being staged in a country where intolerance for the LGBTQ+ community is enshrined in law, and the object of draconian punishments, and where the rights of migrant workers have been abused in obscene ways, has come to the boil in recent months — having simmered since 2010 when Qatar was awarded the tournament.

During that time, however, Ireland has sent a team to the 2015 World Amateur Boxing Championships in Qatar, and a track and field team to the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Qatar, without any of the athletes or coaches on those teams being asked to account for their movements in the way that Kenny was 10 days ago. In 2015 and 2019, the circumstances of the LGBTQ+ community and the population of migrant workers were no better than they are now. These red flags had already been raised.

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If all of this is a matter of immutable principle why should some events be excused from the conversation? The uncomfortable answer is that our conscience on matters such as this is selective and impressionable and flighty, and probably has no claim to be described as a conscience in the first place.

Leona Maguire has played in tournaments sponsored by Aramco, the state-owned Saudi oil company

Shane Lowry and Graeme McDowell, for example, faced hostile questioning for playing in the Saudi International, when that was an event on the European Tour, and McDowell was widely pilloried for accepting Saudi money to join the LIV Golf tour. Those choices were overshadowed by Saudi Arabia’s appalling human rights record, their treatment of women and the LGBTQ+ community, and state-sanctioned murders, at home and abroad, among other atrocities. In the case of Lowry and McDowell, the perceived offence was their collaboration in an act of “sports washing”.

But Leona Maguire has played in tournaments sponsored by Aramco, the state-owned Saudi oil company, and even captained a team in the latest Aramco event in New York, without encountering the kind of pushback that Lowry and McDowell experienced. Willie Mullins, Jessica Harrington, Joseph O’Brien, and other leading Irish trainers, have sent horses to the astonishingly lucrative Saudi Cup race meeting in recent years, without having to answer the question that Stephen Kenny faced.

Is that a failure of the media, or a blind spot in public opinion? Both. Did anybody see who moved the line?

Sport’s oscillating responses to world events, or societal sticking points, has been a pattern for decades. The United States, for example, led a boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 in protest at Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979; 64 other countries followed suit, though not Ireland. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian sport has once again been punished.

But why was there no such response from the global sports community when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014? Who decided that such a naked act of aggression didn’t meet the criteria for ostracising Russia from world sport eight years ago?

The global sports community has also tip-toed around China’s persecution of the Uyghur community in Xinjiang. The United States and Australia refused to send diplomats to the Winter Olympics in Beijing last year, in protest at China’s treatment of the Uyghurs, but they stopped short of withdrawing their athletes.

Over the years the global sports community … have produced expedient responses that tended to prioritise taking part, especially when that meant taking the money

Would other countries have followed if the United States and Australia had decided to pull their teams? Quite possibly. Would it have made any difference to China’s domestic policy? No. Was that a good enough reason to go ahead and take part? Over the years the global sports community — to use that term as a loose collective — has never come up with a coherent answer to that question; instead, they have produced expedient responses that tended to prioritise taking part, especially when that meant taking the money.

There was a long-forgotten boycott of the 1966 World Cup, when all but two teams from Africa and Asia pulled out of the qualifying competition in protest at Fifa’s attempt to reintegrate South Africa and Rhodesia, at the height of apartheid. And there were noises from some countries about a boycott of the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, two years after a military coup that left the country in the grip of a brutal, far-right junta. In the lead-up to the tournament thousands of Argentinian citizens were “disappeared” and never seen again; many others were subjected to torture or rape.

In the event, every country turned up. At the time, the argument of non-governmental organisations, such as Amnesty, was that the tournament “had ratcheted up scrutiny of a previously overlooked regime”, according to writer and journalist Simon Kuper. Fifteen years after that World Cup Kuper interviewed a member of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, the organisation of mothers of Argentina’s disappeared, who said that “it’s thanks to the World Cup that we became known around the world.”

“But Amnesty also concluded,” wrote Kuper, “that the generals had managed to use the tournament to bolster their reputations inside Argentina, at least”.

In that case, how do you sift the good from the bad?

Anyway, getting back to the original question. “Where do you draw the line?” Sorry Stephen. Next question.