Underarm Stats (Well, he did mention ratios ...)

 

Beware the trick of the carefully selected stat, especially one that excludes a whole nation born and raised on the per-capita criteria.

UPDATE:

Post title changed at the suggestion of Duncan Bayne.

Productivity. In medals, at least.

 

Economist Robert MacCulloch notes that New Zealand's productivity growth, as measured in Olympic medals, is astonishing.

In the 1924 Paris Olympics, New Zealand won one bronze medal in total. It was in athletics for the 100m by Arthur Porritt. The race was later immortalised in the film, 'Chariots of Fire.' NZ had a population of around 1 million back then. Just over 100 years later, the tally is 10 golds, 7 silvers and 3 bronzes*, which after adjusting for population increase, is a huge rise. Meanwhile the United States won 45 Golds at the 1924 Paris Olympics, a tally which has plummeted down to around 37 at the Paris 2024 Olympics. So productivity in this sphere in New Zealand, compared to other countries, is phenomenal.

As you're probably aware, for all sorts of reasons New Zealand is shit at economic productivity. 

So why the difference?

On this MacCulloch suggests the reason for this is simple: In sports, unlike elsewhere, New Zealanders value meritocracy "where the fastest, highest, longest .. the best .. wins, regardless of other considerations?"

Kiwis clearly respond to merit being rewarded and produce amongst the finest output in the world when it is. Meanwhile in many other spheres in NZ, everything but meritocracy is winning the day. And productivity is paying the price.

In microcosm, he's probably right. And it's great to see these athletes triumph.

Mind you,  if I were to carp — and I will, even if it's a mite too soon — I can't help wondering how much taxpayers and ratepayers are dunned for all this nationalistic gold. You know, how many millions it's cost taxpayers per medal.

Consider, Arthur Porritt paid his own way to Paris in 1924. So that was zero-taxpayer-dollars** per gold then. And now? Well, I'd like someone somewhere to do the calculation ...

* I've updated the totals.

** Yes, it was pounds then. But using that there would be too confusing.

"New Zealand lacks a national unifying myth"

"New Zealand lacks a national unifying myth that embodies the shared views of the country’s history and future. The loss of a common national story is central to many of News Zealand’s problems. Myths explain our history, chart a path to the future and help bind the country together.
    "Richard Slotkin, who has written extensively about the various mythologies underpinning the United States experience, suggests that ‘myths are the stories – true, untrue, half-true – that ... provide an otherwise loosely affiliated people with models of patriotic action.’ A more formal dictionary definition suggests that myths may be popular traditions embodying core social values* ...
    "There have been a number of what may be described as archetypal experiences in New Zealand history that could approach a 'mythological' status that reflect the embodiment of some of the values that underpin the national identity. ANZAC immediately comes to mind. Wartime activity and service brings a people together often because national survival is at stake.
    "Then there is the 'man alone' myth that underpins much of Jock Phillips writing, along with the Kiwi do-it-yourself 'number 8 wire' approach to problem solving. Sport tends to be a unifier but primarily a hysterical support for the All Blacks which rapidly diminishes if the team does anything but win. Sport is meant to demonstrate resilience in the fact of adversity but not, it would seem, on the part of the fans.
    "Historians are well positioned to invent and develop new national stories. ... But historians have not taken on the task of devising a coherent national mythology that can bring unity to a fractured nation. Instead, students are being taught radically different versions of the nation’s past. All this reflects not simply divergent opinions on specific issues, but disagreements about the fundamental character of our institutions and the purposes of our nation.
    "One myth which did possess a unifying feature but which has been badly eroded is the position of the Treaty of Waitangi. The treaty established a foundation for equal citizenship, one people with equal recognition under the law.
    "Hobson at the signing of the Treaty is reputed to have said 'He iwi tahi tatou – 'we are now one people.' ... The problem is that in many respects myths [like this one] contain a great deal of invention and not a lot of evidence. But Hobson’s Pledge, whether it was said or not, provides a solid background for a national identity and the foundation for a common purpose. We should be one people. We should acknowledge our differences but our shared objective should be a unity of purpose. And with that unity of purpose we can become ... a country with well-educated people, who enjoy the lifestyle their unique setting offers and the good health that goes with that ..." 

~ Thomas Cranmer from his post 'A Common Purpose and a National Mythology'

* Myths are not a lie, explains mythologist Joseph Campbell, and to call them that is a misunderstanding — 

"a very strong and narrow opinion of what a myth 'is.' Someone who, perhaps, has only been exposed to the negative use of the term as a phrase for something that is seen as a 'mistruth.' Something told with the intent to deceive, or from the vantage point of a naive or uneducated mind. For many, calling something a 'myth' is to associate it with a profound deception: a feeble or unsophisticated attempt to explain material reality before the advent of the scientific age. Some see the term as an equivalent to the more modern 'fake news.' 

"The contemporary conception of myth as falsehood has led people to think of myths as fairytales (another complex story structure that is often dismissed as containing much less essential truth than they actually do).
"But for Campbell, myth presents a version of the truth that is far more essential than that which can be gleaned from almanacs, censuses, and encyclopaedias, whose 'facts' are dependent on the experience of the field of time and are often outdated as soon as they are published."

Writer Robert A. Johnson sums it up, saying "Myths are a special kind of literature not written or created by a single individual, but produced by the imagination and experience of an entire age and culture, and can be seen as the distillation of the dreams and experiences of a whole culture." 

So neither unimportant nor trivial. And certainly not a lie.

 

Paying back heartland rugby for making 'Big Rugby' possible.

Yet again, NZ rugby is finding ways to shoot itself in the foot.

To fix the multiple and growing problems it has made for itself —  increasing fan disconnection with the game; decreasing interest in "franchise rugby"; the disconnections between the amateur and professional games; the withering of heartland rugby and the slow death of the NPC and provincial rugby —different groups are arguing over different ways to rearrange the deck chairs in the back office, which is going to change very little of what's been happening out front.

Here's an idea. A simple one. A simple idea to directly and organically link the money-making areas of the game with the grassroots, and to reward the makers of the homegrown player: How about when a player "goes to the show," those who helped make that player successful are rewarded. 

That is to say (based on the current set-up), if a player is selected from his/her club to go to provincial level, money is directed back to the club, perhaps in proportion to the player's playing fee. They're rewarded for growing and nurturing that talent. And even though they lose the player for some of the season, the club and its coaches and support folk will still see reward for their effort. And will be motivated to do more in future.

Take that principle to the next level.

Let's say a player is then selected for higher honours, even to a Super "franchise" to which the club is not linked. Then a portion of that higher fee will then be directed down to the province, and also down to their club. Once again, everyone who played a part in growing and nurturing that player is rewarded, and all of them retain on ongoing interest in their success, even if (as happens too often now) they never see the player again except on the telly.

But see them on the telly now and club/province/region is just as happy, 'cos they know they're going to be rewarded for the player's success. Everybody's smiling.

The same principle would apply to national honours, and even to a player's Japanese or Euro sabbatical. In the professional era, that means a professional payment. And a portion of that too should head back to the heartland, keeping the whole rugby community tied together, instead of squabbling over the doling out of ever-decreasing spoils. 

There are about 280 full-time players across the men’s and women’s games in New Zealand, and more overseas - not to mention the many receiving payments of some kind. Imagine of some portion from all of them were directed back very visibly to those who helped make their success possible.

So instead of withering away as the higher levels of rugby grow fat, as they are now, heartland rugby instead gets a chance to grow fat with them, most especially the clubs, coaches and provinces who are most successful at selecting, nurturing and producing the best talent.

The system used to work in Australian football until the marketing bunnies took over there too. It can work just as well here.

I'm not simply saying "go back go the good old days," but there were things that worked then that can still be encouraged to work now — most particularly the strong links between clubs and the upper levels, with fans showing loyalty to their regional reps because they'd been elevated from their own clubs, and the players themselves retaining that connection — club first — coming back and playing and supporting and helping out around the club.  Not as a matter of charity, but because that's just what you did. Just like the famous ethic of "cleaning the sheds."

Fan loyalty is key, 'cos in the end that's where the money comes from (either from fans themselves, or from sponsors who want to be in front of fans' eyes). And also key is to keep directing large amounts of that money back into producing the players who make the game possible, especially to the clubs who make it all possible.

So clubs are still the place where it needs to all happen. At the moment when players arrive at the big time it's like they've landed from the moon. Clubs lose their players and live off crumbs while administrators ignore them, and commentators rarely talk about them. Change the way that money flows, however, and commentators might start talking up the players' clubs, provinces and their previous coaches and mentors, and all of them might receive both more respect and a regular payday. 

This would be a way to begin paying back those in heartland rugby who make Big Rugby possible.

Emotionally committing to a sport

 

ONE THING RUGBY DOES (did?) almost better than any other sport is to create moments of great intensity, great drama, that hinge on actions taken ine the next few moments, or seconds, on the outcome of which it feels (at the time) like worlds might fall or empires crumble.

It seems, on the evidence of the weekend, that that might be over. That rugby officialdom has shot all that in the foot.

To be emotionally invested in a sporting contest -- and that's why we invest so much time and, sometimes, money, to watch the damn things, isn't it? because we are so emotionally invested -- then we have to know that what we're seeing in front of us is final. Is authoritative. Is complete. Is over. That the thing that's just happened has happened, is irrevocable, that worlds have lost (or been won), and we can rejoice or lament as deserved.

In short, that the actions of that moment, for good or ill, are exactly as final as death.

But why commit emotionally when you know all decisions (bar send-offs) are contingent?

Why commit, as a fan, to your team defending the line for phase after heroic phase, when you know there's a match official with his arm out waiting to bring the game back five minutes by saying "No advantage." 

Why care, even a little, when you know the defensive effort will only be a reward for the other team?

And why care at all about a try, the one thing his or her team is straining heart and sinew to score and the fan can celebrate with whole heart and soul? Because even this, after whistle has gone and celebrations subside, can be taken away now at the tweak of an off-field match official's microphone which happens to bear the words "No try; we're going back four phases [four phases!] for a fumble on the other side of the field." A fumble which the on-field match official saw, at the time, and said "Play on"!

Why celebrate? 

Why care?

Why invest emotionally, even in (what should be) the greatest of things in the sport, of a scintillating and possibly match-winning try in a World Cup Final, when even that can be overturned so blithely? (Turns out, ironically, that the one thing, the only thing, that is irreversible is the awarding of a penalty. Even if the match official himself tells the players before the resulting kick is taken -- for three points in a game lost by just one -- that the decision he made was wrong, it turns out that he's barred from reversing it.)

I ILLUSTRATE BY CONTRAST. I take you to the very end of this year's home-and-away AFL season, in which the fortunes of five teams hinged on the result of one game -- a game in which Adelaide kicked what looked like a winning goal against Sydney. To give them a win. But almost immediately (and the speed was the key) the goal umpire called "no goal." No goal, he said, because the ball had hit the post. No goal, meaning that because of that decision teams went into the final eight that wouldn't have otherwise, and other teams missed out. Including Adelaide. (And my team, Geelong.)

Turned out however that the goal umpire was wrong. That the ball didn't hit the post. That Adelaide coulda-shoulda won. That (because of that putative win) several teams who had already started their off-season prep might have to be called back. 

So what's the AFL to do? Here's what they did: they came out on the Monday and said two things: "We wuz wrong." And: "Tough." It was left to sports commentators to say the third: "Suck it up."

At the time, I thought they were empty-headed. That they were wrong. Not so. What they perhaps understood, and what the weekend's failure of officiation illustrated so well, by its absence, is (and I capitalise this to be sure to make the point) that FANS NEED TO KNOW THAT WHAT THEY'RE SEEING IN THE HERE-AND-NOW REALLY MATTERS. Because if they don't, if they start to think that it's all contingent, that it's all mutable, then there's no point in hanging on the outcome of every damn moment in what otherwise is a pretty stupid spectacle.

And when that happens, people just stop caring. And stop watching.

And let's not even get started on red cards and yellow cards, and the foolishness of importing, into a man-on-man game of collisions in which every man matters, a system borrowed from soccer. (I'll let a sports writer at RNZ do some of that heavy lifting for me, suggesting a sport from which it might be better to borrow.)

Let's instead lament the decision of our team leaders who decided not to take three points when it mattered, and congratulate the Springboks and their coaches -- who worked out that to win, with the rules as they are, that it's best to play low-risk rugby in which you invite the other team to make the mistakes.

And to wonder whether we should really care about it at all.

REPOST: So what do we call this roundball game played with a foot?

Since I've had this 'discussion' several times over recent weeks, I figured it might be timely to repost these thoughts on what to call the roundball game -- "football," of course, simply meaning games played on foot, i.e., not played on horseback ...

"Archery was essential for defence of the realm; football wasn't.... 
    "Small wonder that the game was royally disliked. Its origins were as common as gum under a tavern table. At first it didn't even have a name with any distinction. All the royal edicts called it 'ball play or 'playing at ball.' The term 'football' first appeared in a 1486 document, but it didn't mean a game in which a foot came into contact with a ball. Instead, it meant a game played 'on foot' rather than on horse, as was royally-approved jousting. The name also showed that football belonged to the commoners; only the nobility could afford to use horses for games!"

~ PFRA Research, from their article 'A Friendly Kinde of Fight: The Origins of Football to 1633'

"The earliest written reference to a game called 'football' dates from the 15th century, although the game itself has been around a lot longer.
   "In its oldest versions, any part of the body could be used to control the ball or tackle opponents. The name it acquired refers not to the fact that only the feet could be used to propel the ball, but that the game was played on foot. This marked it out as a game played by ordinary people, as distinct from the team games of the nobility which were played on horseback....
   "This early knockabout version of football probably derived from a game called 'harpastum,' which was played by Roman soldiers. This would have looked a little like our modern-day rugby and was used as a training exercise. It involved plenty of body-tackling and general commotion. The locals then perhaps created their own rough-and-ready version."

~ from 'History of Football,' from ICONS Online (commissioned by UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

"Football, by the way, originally just meant any game played on foot, as apart from a game played on horseback. So it’s been a game of the streets, indeed much of the early history of football is told from the ways in which it was banned by successive monarchs, who felt that playing football would take people away from archery; equestrian sports were more obviously of military value.
    "With the growth of industrialisation in England from the middle of the 18th century, with urbanisation and the move from the fields to the cities, then the nature of the game might change. The sort of football played on paved streets is different from a game played in the fields....
    "INTERVIEWER: Where does the name ‘soccer’ come from?
    "A: There’s nothing definite in that. But essentially by the turn of the century, one of the stories is someone asked one of the chaps at school, ‘Want to come together at Rugger, old chap’ and he said, ‘No, I think I’ll stay and have a game of soccer’, and it’s the Association Football, shortened to soccer. As ‘rugger’ and ‘Assoc’ becomes ‘soccer’....
    "In 1863 after a series of discussions in the paper, in the field, that a group of old boys from the various Public Schools got together in London in the Freemasons’ Tavern in October of 1863, and founded the Football Association. That is the defining moment in the founding of soccer. It also the defining moment in the first football code, Rugby, which had been played at Rugby School for decades before that ... the essential difference then between the two major forms of football, one is the game in which you run with the ball, carrying it, and the other is the dribbling game. Much of that would depend on the school you went to. Rugby, wide open spaces, green grass, you could run, you could tackle, you could play the rough game. If you were playing at Winchester or the Cloisters on hard grounds, then you had bans because of space, of the surface, on handling and running and tackling."

~ sports historian Bill Murray, from an interview on the ABC's Sports Factor

"The English roll their eyes when Americans talk about 'soccer.' But actually, it's what the game should be called. And it's a British word....
    "The word comes from 19th-century British slang for Association Rules football, a kicking and dribbling game that was distinct from Rugby rules football back when both versions were played by British schoolboys. The lads who preferred the rougher game popular in schools like Rugby and Eton seceded from Britain's fledgling Football Association in 1871 to write their own rules, and soon players were calling the two sorts of football rugger and soccer.

~ Der Speigel, from its article 'It's Called Soccer'

Meanwhile, in a land down under ...

"Since its creation in Melbourne in the 1850s ... it [Australian Football] has evolved to a higher form, leaving behind other codes, which the writer Oriel Gray termed 'necessary steps in the ascent of man'."

~ Stephen Alomes, from his chapter 'Tales of a Dreamtime: Australian Football as a Secular Religion,' p.48

 

"It is a very strange type of professionalism that Super Rugby has created in New Zealand..."

"[I]t is a very strange type of professionalism that Super Rugby has created in New Zealand...
    "What makes sports meaningful is the contest involved: what it means to the supporters and players, and the quality of the players on view.
    "Super Rugby may have some quality players, but most of the games are increasingly meaningless to most supporters....
    "For all the apparent centrality of rugby to New Zealand, most of the time it occurs as a peripheral activity and drama for most – especially Super Rugby. The problem is Super Rugby, its format and length of season, its lack of drama and increasingly, its lack of meaning.
    "Fans of the game are increasingly alienated by the way the game is being organised and marketed. For we all know, deep down, that Super Rugby is a failed competition that struggles to hold our interest across a year....
    "[R]ugby on TV [has] become a low-quality meaningless extended blur. And yet ... the ritual of coming to the rugby, to live rugby ... [is also] losing its allure.
    "What complicates matters is the way that Super Rugby is not really professional in being an open market. To play for the All Blacks you must play in New Zealand and so our professional rugby teams are effectively a closed shop of players – and increasingly, a closed and limited shop of talent. The NZRFU is really the grand patriotic collectivist corporation and the Super franchises are the shop-fronts for the collectivist brand and product.
    "Speaking sociologically, we are facing disenchantment...."

~ Mike Grimshaw from his post 'Stupor Rugby?'

Soccer? Rugger? Football? Footy?

"Archery was essential for defence of the realm; football wasn't....
    "Small wonder that the game was royally disliked. Its origins were as common as gum under a tavern table. At first it didn't even have a name with any distinction. All the royal edicts called it 'ball play or 'playing at ball.' The term 'football' first appeared in a 1486 document, but it didn't mean a game in which a foot came into contact with a ball. Instead, it meant a game played 'on foot' rather than on horse, as was royally-approved jousting. The name also showed that football belonged to the commoners; only the nobility could afford to use horses for games!"

~ PFRA Research, from their article 'A Friendly Kinde of Fight: The Origins of Football to 1633'

"The earliest written reference to a game called 'football' dates from the 15th century, although the game itself has been around a lot longer.
   "In its oldest versions, any part of the body could be used to control the ball or tackle opponents. The name it acquired refers not to the fact that only the feet could be used to propel the ball, but that the game was played on foot. This marked it out as a game played by ordinary people, as distinct from the team games of the nobility which were played on horseback....
   "This early knockabout version of football probably derived from a game called 'harpastum,' which was played by Roman soldiers. This would have looked a little like our modern-day rugby and was used as a training exercise. It involved plenty of body-tackling and general commotion. The locals then perhaps created their own rough-and-ready version."

~ from 'History of Football,' from ICONS Online (commissioned by UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

"Football, by the way, originally just meant any game played on foot, as apart from a game played on horseback. So it’s been a game of the streets, indeed much of the early history of football is told from the ways in which it was banned by successive monarchs, who felt that playing football would take people away from archery; equestrian sports were more obviously of military value.
    "With the growth of industrialisation in England from the middle of the 18th century, with urbanisation and the move from the fields to the cities, then the nature of the game might change. The sort of football played on paved streets is different from a game played in the fields....
    "INTERVIEWER: Where does the name ‘soccer’ come from?
    "A: There’s nothing definite in that. But essentially by the turn of the century, one of the stories is someone asked one of the chaps at school, ‘Want to come together at Rugger, old chap’ and he said, ‘No, I think I’ll stay and have a game of soccer’, and it’s the Association Football, shortened to soccer. As ‘rugger’ and ‘Assoc’ becomes ‘soccer’....
    "In 1863 after a series of discussions in the paper, in the field, that a group of old boys from the various Public Schools got together in London in the Freemasons’ Tavern in October of 1863, and founded the Football Association. That is the defining moment in the founding of soccer. It also the defining moment in the first football code, Rugby, which had been played at Rugby School for decades before that ... the essential difference then between the two major forms of football, one is the game in which you run with the ball, carrying it, and the other is the dribbling game. Much of that would depend on the school you went to. Rugby, wide open spaces, green grass, you could run, you could tackle, you could play the rough game. If you were playing at Winchester or the Cloisters on hard grounds, then you had bans because of space, of the surface, on handling and running and tackling."

~ sports historian Bill Murray, from an interview on the ABC's Sports Factor

"The English roll their eyes when Americans talk about 'soccer.' But actually, it's what the game should be called. And it's a British word....
    "The word comes from 19th-century British slang for Association Rules football, a kicking and dribbling game that was distinct from Rugby rules football back when both versions were played by British schoolboys. The lads who preferred the rougher game popular in schools like Rugby and Eton seceded from Britain's fledgling Football Association in 1871 to write their own rules, and soon players were calling the two sorts of football rugger and soccer.

~ Der Speigel, from its article 'It's Called Soccer'

Meanwhile, in a land down under ...

"Since its creation in Melbourne in the 1850s ... it [Australian Football] has evolved to a higher form, leaving behind other codes, which the writer Oriel Gray termed 'necessary steps in the ascent of man'."

~ Stephen Alomes, from his chapter 'Tales of a Dreamtime: Australian Football as a Secular Religion,' p.48

"Breathe"

Bruce Lee
Credit: PA

“You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing everything with logic. If words control you that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.”
         ~ attrib. Bruce Lee [Hat tip Michael Hurd]

Bob Jones on rugby's decline

Bob Jones on rugby's decline:

"I can’t think of another sport so overwhelmingly rule‑bound. Constant whistle‑blowing, pedantic referees, interference empowered linesmen and third television referees to re‑examine the rare moments of action, make for a tedious spectacle. It reeks of the school room.
    "I’ve always been critical of my fellow New Zealanders for their timid acceptance of rule‑obsessed officialdom blighting our lives, so overall, the decline in interest in rugby is probably a healthy thing.
    "The sight of a referee, having for the thousandth time blown his whistle and stopped play, then beckoning with his finger as if addressing a two year old, to a giant forward to come to him is degrading. The oaf stumbles forward, stands meekly before him while he’s scolded, then if yellow‑carded, hangs his head in shame as he leaves for his 10 minutes punishment.
    "I thought about that when watching the greatest game of all, namely test cricket and the just completed, wonderfully dramatic Ashes series. A fresh Aussie bowler came on, stripped his jersey off and handed it to the umpire, already adorned with three other player jerseys around his waist, then the bowler pulled his hat off, banged it on top of the two the umpire already had on his head, then carefully placed his sunglasses atop of the pile, before commencing to bowl.
    "During overs it’s common to see players joking and chatting with the umpires. It’s a game for God’s sake...
    "Potentially rugby is a spectacular game but there’s an urgent need for a more relaxed approach to the rules, a cry I might add, echoed by the previous coach."

. 

"Dear Mr Umpire, I understand that a footy fan referred to you as a bald headed flog on the weekend. Please don’t take this personally. You are not part of the game. I mean that in the nicest possible way. You are simply part of the game’s infrastructure. Like a goal post." #QotD

"Dear Mr Umpire. 

    "I understand that a footy fan referred to you 
on the weekend as a bald headed flog. ... 

    "Please don’t take this abuse personally. You are not part of the game. I mean that in the nicest possible way. You are simply part of the game’s infrastructure. Like a goal post. So when the fans lean over the fence and yell abuse, they are actually screaming at the sky, not at your person, as such. 

    "Yelling at the footy has been going on since the Romans fed Christians to the lions. (Not the Brisbane Lions, real lions). Back then they screamed, “stultus es!” ["You are stupid!] which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. They yell because life isn’t fair. They yell because men don’t understand their wives and because wives do understand their men. They yell because someone took their carpark at the supermarket last Sunday, because no one changed the empty toilet paper roll at home on Friday morning, because they got fined for doing 42 kilometres an hour in a forty zone. They yell because they are not allowed to yell anymore! It’s not about you! 

    "If fans can no longer yell at the footy then footy is inpensius [ruined]. If a bloke can’t shake his fist at the footy gods and screech, “you white (insert other appropriate colour here) maggot” then life as we know it has ended. But you need to understand that you are not the maggot, you are simply the maggot’s avatar. The maggot is the pain he is feeling now, which is the happiness he had yesterday... 

    "Understand that being an umpire carries with it certain difficulties just as being a teacher does, or politician, or a proctologist. Let them yell. If they yell, they are happy. Happy in the sense that the grief no longer sits on their chest... 

    "You would take this away? Surely not. If you take offence at being described as bald, grow hair. Or get another occupation. 

          ~ Dips O'Donnel, from his post 'Umpire and Fans: Yelling at the Sky'
.

Sherlock Holmes watches the world's most libertarian sport [updated]

Well, not Sherlock Holmes himself, but his author, Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the following about the world's most libertarian sport, Australian football, after watching the 1920 VFL Grand Final between Carlton & Richmond:

I know something about football, for I played Rugby for the Edinburgh University and soccer with the Hampshire team. I have also seen the best American football. I consider the Australian game is magnificent, and from the spectacular point of view it is probably the best of them all.
    The man-handling element in the British game, when the play is fast and the scrums break up, make it an extraordinarily fine game, but in the Australian game there is such constant movement that it stands by itself. They have developed several points which are quite new to me. One of them is accurate passing by low drop kicking. I think that could be introduced into the English game with very great advantage, for it seems to be faster than any pass by hand. Another point that struck me was the extraordinary accuracy of the screw kicking—that is to say when a man running past the goal kicks a goal at right angles to his own line. I have never seen anything to touch the accuracy of both the punting and drop kicking.
    I should think that it is the most gruelling of any game I have seen, and yet the players appeared to be as fresh in the last quarter as they were in the first, and they were playing with just as much vigour.

UPDATE:

World's most libertarian sport?

Football is not a game of rules, it is a collection of understandings. It must be so because a game that is played across a vast open field with an odd shaped ball by 36 players who are permitted to tackle and bump and maintain physical contact cannot be subject to rules. Its like suggesting that a war be subject to the off-side law.
   So, it is a collection of understandings that governs the behaviour of the players. They will not act dangerously and push an opponent in the back, they will not trip each other, they will not strike each other with intent, they will not throw the ball, they will not tackle each other above the shoulders. These notions are what we might call football’s “truths”. The umpire is only there to adjudicate when a player goes beyond these boundaries. True, there are rules around certain aspects of the game, like the scoring, but the essence of the game is not found in government.

.

“Integrity?” [updated]

As of this weekend, there’s a new oxymoron to add to 'Australian culture': Australian integrity. And a lesson to be drawn about owning up.

The position of Australian cricket captain in the country’s pecking order is just one down, or even one up,  from Australian PM. It bears with it all the virtues and values the Australian likes to think are embodied by those from the broad brown land: courage, fortitude, tenacity, a relentless drive to succeed, integrity.

Look however at this press conference over the weekend with the most recent Australian cricket captain to wear that mantle, just after his team were found to be cheating by illegally tampering with the ball in the method described by the newest member of the team, Cameron Bancroft:

It makes for painful viewing, and not only for  Australians. It isn't cricket -- and there's a reason that phrase still does have some resonance, because it still stands for some kind of rectitude in a world in which that quality seems in such dreadfully short supply.

IN MANY WAYS, THE the press conference says more than the blatant cheating. In this interview his integrity, or lack thereof, is fully exposed. It is an apology without offering an apology, a mea culpa without the slightest intention to change. Listen to the words, which betray more than he thinks:

The leadership group knew about it, he says, we spoke about it at lunch. ('We spoke about cheating, and decided to get the new bloke to do it.' That tells you all you need to know about his team's 'leadership.')

I'm not proud of what happened. Um. ('I'm really not proud of you blokes noticing the young bloke putting that stuff down his trousers.' But would he, you wonder, have been really proud of winning if they hadn't been caught?)

You know, it's not within the spirit of the game. (From Smith's career, and that of recent Australian captains, there's little evidence he even knows what that last phrase means. And if he did, why did he sanction the cheating and the manner of it? Blank out.)

My integrity, the team's integrity, the leadership group's integrity has come into question, and rightfully so. (Mate, it's not under question, it's fully revealed. But note how in his own mind, it's still a question.)

Um, it's not on. It's certainly not on, and it won't happen again, I can promise you that, under my leadership. (Note how he appears to try to convince himself it's not on. ('It's certainly not on.') But we already know you're a liar and can't be trusted, so what exactly are your promises to anyone now worth?)

There is nothing in this about which to feel proud. (And he doesn't look it, does he. And this is precisely the consequence of cheating to achieve a value: shame in other's eyes and, most importantly, in your own.)

It's not what we're about. (But, mate, in every sense, it is. This is who you are. And that's the bit on which he really does need to stop and reflect.)

ON WATCHING IT A second time, and cringing as much as the first, I thought back to the ignominious end of South African Hanse Cronje, and reflected how reality is so often Shakespearean in being the final tragic arbiter of poor choices. Smith clearly thinks he can control this (as we move on) because he still doesn't see the full magnitude of what he's made happen. That too speaks bucket loads about how important he truly views it in the scheme of things.

Sure, it's not the first time a test cricket captain has been caught tampering with the ball. Even the opposing South African captain in this series Faf Du Plessis was caught earlier in the season smearing his breath mint over the ball to help it perform more wildly. "It's so difficult to know whats right and what isn't," this cheat laughed unapologetically after being sprung. That his team's supporters laughed loudly too raises equally 'many questions' about their integrity as well.

But, "difficult"? No, what he is saying is purely evasive bollocks. Virtues pertain to our choices -- the choice to focus, or not; to act with courage, or not; to put illegal substances on a ball, or not. The choices are only difficult when you've forgotten, or never fully understood, what it is to do right. That is to say, to do right by yourself.

It really isn't that hard to know what to do when you do know, and Australian cricket did it back in 1988 when it dropped wicketkeeper Greg Dyer after he'd falsely claimed he'd taken a catch against New Zealander Andrew Jones. Back then, a cricketer's word was a given, and Dyer's was taken. When the truth emerged however he was dropped, just like he dropped that catch, and he never played for his country again. It wasn't cricket.

THERE ARE TWO VIRTUES involved here: honesty and integrity, both being based on the recognition that real values (like a test victory) can never be earned or lastingly enjoyed if they were obtained by deception.

Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud.

It is not the fear of being found out that undercuts success: it's your own knowledge that victory was achieved dishonestly. And to the extent you don't evade that awareness, it's knowledge that immediately diminishes you in your own eyes. (The only fool you can't fool is yourself.)

And if you do elect to evade that awareness of who you really are? Then you're immediately on the road to making reality your enemy, rather than your honest ally, which is a long and slippery slope to total destruction. (Objective morality being about achieving your own lasting happiness, based on unvarnished adherence to reality.)

Integrity is the recognition of this fact in action: that one's primary orientation must be to reality, not to putting something over on others.

Because trying to win by deceiving others, that would be the mark of a coward.

Or of today's Australian cricket captain.


UPDATE: 
The ABC's Jim Maxwell answers the question:  "Why is Australia so outraged at Steven Smith's team?"

A cricket-writing colleague, not from Australia, asked me that question on Sunday. It was a valid query. Ball-tampering does happen in cricket, probably a lot more than anyone outside the game realises. Players have been sanctioned for it before. In the ICC's Code of Conduct it is ranked at the same level as making a seriously obscene gesture, and is less grave than intimidating an umpire. The maximum penalty is a fine and suspension for one Test, which Steven Smith received and Cameron Bancroft did not.
So, why is that not the end of the story? Why was there such widespread national outrage over an incident that cricket's governing body views as only of moderate severity?
To answer a question with another question, what do they know of Australia who only Australian cricket know? READ ON >>>

 And by the way, it's not just Australia. And it's not just the cricket world. "Test cricket was front page news across the world over the past [few] days, for all the wrong reasons."

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So the decision is finally announced!

Yes folks, now we know!

The decision we've eagerly awaited for the last few weeks has finally been made, and I'm excited!

Yes folks: It's just been officially announced that Gary Ablett Jr. is returning to the Geelong Cats next year.

The return of the little master.

Great news.

So who else is excited?

Is there a better centre trio than Ablett, Dangerfield and Selwood?

Exciting times.

In sports anyway.
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The Cathedral of Sport

An early concept sketch here by Daryl Jackson for the Great Southern Stand at the MCG — the Cathedral of Sport.

"There should,” he says, "be a sense of arrival at the outside ticket box, a celebratory progression to one's designated seat, and the anticipation of spectacle."
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Quote of the Day: On test cricket

"Cricket, especially in Test form, is a conceptual sport... it is the great game of the mind."
~ from the Guardian Sportsblog post 'How to make cricket commentary more compelling: through good storytelling' 

Quote of the Day: On bludging sailors and subsidised Cups

“It’s starting to look as if Grant Dalton is well-named, because he’s after another one. A grant. A handout. A reach-around from taxpayer to pocket -- the pocket being his and his colleagues, the lever to extract the dosh being the fear “we” may not have [an] America’s Cup [defence…
    “Because his America’s Cup programme is looking increasing like it’s just welfare for well-fed sailors.
    “If he and his colleagues want to run another challenge, then I suggest they approach a few of those businessmen and women who can be heard saying the America’s Cup would be “good for the economy.” People like Marine Industry Association bludger-in-chief Peter Busfield [who says “a decision not to invest would be disastrous for New Zealand.” If people like Mr Busfield think it would be good for their economy, then let them either front up, or shut up. Put your hand in your own pocket, Peter, and keep it out of ours."
~ quote from this blog’s 2014 post ‘Piss Off, Grant.’

“The bottom line is this: if people with their own money want to enjoy having a team in the Cup,  then all power to them. Great. Put up your own dosh.
    “If businessmen and women think a Team NZ in the America’s Cup will help their business, then all power to them too. Let them put up their own money to help their business out.
    “And if politicians, like [Bill English] and Steven Joyce et al want a place at the international sporting table, then let the bastards go out and get a real job to earn it.
    “[And] don’t employ economists to write bullshit on your behalf to justify your expensive grandstanding.”
~ quote from this blog’s 2014 post ‘Sailing in Subsidised Waters’

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Do we really need to know what Ali Williams does of an evening?

 

Sport itself is good for us, and the best sports are genuine metaphors for life – and many of the very best sportsman absorb their sport’s life lessons to become better human beings. But to be good at sports is no guarantee of being good at life. And the commentators who insist that sportsmen and women are “role models” do us all a disservice – and, if taken seriously, would require these heroes and heroines to live their lives for others instead of themselves, and to live them as if they were cardboard cut-outs and not the real flesh-and-blood human beings they are.

Real flesh and blood human beings don’t all go home after a big game to a nice currant bun and a dry sherry with the vicar. They go out sometimes and party, to enjoy themselves, to let off steam, to meet up with friends and teammates to carouse and debate and dance and argue and have fun (you remember fun, don’t you?); and sometimes – just sometimes -- like all of us --they do things they may regret in the morning – about which these people whom the media make into something they’re not are compelled to deliver mawkish apologies some time later that only their sponsors and small children generally believe.

Sometimes too these flesh-and-blood sportsmen will do things that are against the law. And some of those times it might be worth recognising that the media, on our behalf, are measuring these young men and women against a ridiculous standard – that we should insist the media commentators themselves should grow up -- and that it is the law itself that is an ass.

So good on Herald writer Chris Rattue (a line I’m sure I’ve never written before) for reminding readers that:

At this point, Ali Williams and James O'Connor, two former test rugby stars, are guilty of nothing having been arrested on cocaine charges in Paris. And guilty of nothing they are, whatever the outcome.
    Has there ever been a more futile, damaging legal line than the ridiculous war on drugs?
    It has created so many victims, in so many ways. Prohibition, as it inevitably does, has created a disaster it can't solve.

And so it has. And so we have documented here many times.[See posts on Prohibition and on the War on Drugs.]

Role models? Better for us all to grow up, and for commentators to explain to punters that admiring someone for one thing theyu they do doesn’t necessitate admiring every thing they do – and that these people are simply human beings like us who in their chosen trade can often so some super-human things. And those are the things we should, and do, admire them for.

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Olympic-grade motivation?

 

Interesting to hear that golfers are talking about pulling the plug on Rio because of their fears about the Zika virus, and the feeling that being there doesn’t mean that much to them.

The fears of the Zika virus are real, and only the fact the Olympics these days have become a virtual Government-Games means that decisions about the disease‘s threat to the athletes are not being made rationally, or individually, but by committee.

But the golfers talking about how much competing at the Olympics maybe doesn’t mean to them highlights again that, just maybe, some of the sports now appearing at the Olympics shouldn’t even be there at all. Because every new one that does appear at the Games (like sevens, like soccer, like tennis, like golf, all of which have much bigger fixtures to fry than this one) dilutes the impact of those events that have always been there and always have been associated with the Olympics – the gold medal for which is the biggest thing in an athlete’s life, for which they would crawl across broken glass if they had to.

A simple standard to follow if judging inclusion of a sport or game could be: if the Olympic gold is not the highest trophy in your sport, then your your sport should not be there.

Which is like saying that, you know, unless the Olympic gold means this much to the sportsmen and women involved (and let’s face it, golf isn’t even a sport!) then maybe just give this one away and stick to your Wimbledons and World Cups:

 

 

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A stolen boxing broadcast

 

A fellow unhappy with the cost and quality of the $49 pay-per-view Parker fight paid the promoters for the broadcast on his televion at home, then live-streamed the view of his television to what ended up being about 20,000 online viewers.

Not unnaturally the fight’s promoter, Dean Lonergan, is unhappy to be losing out on that $1 million.

Now, it’s true that not all of those 20,000 or so would have stumped up the $49 otherwise (they may have watched it instead at the pub, or not bothered to watch the fight at all) so Lonergan was never going to get that whole million.

And it’s true that with easy video apps on mobile phones --  and the rise of the likes of easy-streaming apps like Periscope, and other websites regularly re-streaming other broadcaster’s property – that streaming and rebroadcasting other live events, either truly live or by videoing your television or computer – of just by pinching someone else’s stream -- is just going to keep getting easier and easier.

And it’s also true that the host broadcaster, Sky, has adopted several very effective methods by which to really piss off its customers and destroy whatever loyalty they might otherwise feel to the broadcaster.

But … none of this makes the theft any more justifiable, does it? Indeed, with the inexorable rise of all this exciting new technology, it makes it even more important to get the morality of it right.

It’s not a new argument; it’s the same old argument about intellectual property we’ve had any times before, with some folf thinking that because theft of someone else’s property is becoming easier, that this somehow makes it justifiable. As if a new fashionable style of clothing were to justify pickpocketing simply because it made the pockets more vulnerable.

Not so.

Ease does not justify theft.

In all senses that you care to examine, the fight, the broadcast and the production of the broadcast are the property of the broadcaster and promoter. It’s their fight, their broadcast, their product – and they have to pay all the bills to make it happen, and earn enough to make it happen again. They are entitled to sell it on whatever terms they care to, including prohibitions against rebroadcast. (Terms to which anyone paying their fee has agreed.)

The dickhead who violated this agreement sees himself as a “Robin Hood,” robbing from the rich broadcaster to distribute their product to the sporting poor who otherwise couldn’t afford to watch.

It may have been expensive and overpriced. But it’s their fight, their broadcast, their product. So it’s their call how they choose to price it. (“Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana,” says Bill Gates, that of sporting events in particular. And with only a small local audience on which to draw, the promoter needs to be able to earn enough from those few punters to pay for the purse and everything needed to make the whole product happen)

It may be that Sky sucks. (In fact, it’s true that they do.) But it’s their fight, their broadcast, their product. Don’t like it? Then don’t do business with them.

It may be too that many of those who did watch the re-streamed broadcast couldn’t have afforded to watch it otherwise. That may be true, though I doubt it. But so what? It’s neither their fight, their broadcast, nor their product. It’s not up to them to set any terms whatsoever, because it’s just not theirs. It’s the property of broadcaster and promoter.

And taking away or reducing their profit reduces the likelihood of future broadcasts and promotions. (As Ludwig Von Mises observed: “Without copyright protection, musicians, authors, and composers are in the position of having to bear all the costs of production while the benefits go to others.”)

As technology changes we do need to resurrect the public morality that publicly rejects theft. Today’s one of those days in that battle.

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