Sport Sorrows

It may surprise you to hear, that as a self confessed geek I really hate sport. I never got the big deal about it. Back in school why did playing football (or ‘soccer’ if you’re from America where football refers to the sport in which you don’t actually use your feet, go figure) make you cool whereas playing a video game didn’t? Both involve enjoying yourself for the sake of enjoying yourself with no real benefit to the world or those around you, sure football gets you healthy but so I’d sooner die ten years earlier than having my nipples freeze off for the sake of passing a few hours a day.

Truth be told I was never any good at sport, whether I hated it because I wasn’t good or I wasn’t good because I hated it I’m not quite sure but every PE lesson would usually be the same story. The PE teacher (using the term teacher lightly because Physical Education is seriously lacking the education department) would fob us off and tell us to play football or hockey while he sat on his arse doing significantly less than naff-all. He’d choose 5 people to pick teams, I’d be one of the very last to be picked and get told to go in the net because it was no secret I was about as adept at football as Wayne Rooney is at making anything close to a coherent sentence. “I’m crap in the net” I’d try to reason, but of course, you can’t reason with an idiot.

I don’t know if it was just me, but I was always under the impression that football was a team sport yet it seems like a free-for-all to score the most goals with the complete lack of any form of tactics, last time I checked we didn’t win the ’66 world cup by having all the team in the forward position. A typical five-a-side game would consist of 2 people in their respective nets and the other eight all desperately trying to get the ball like it’s the last thanksgiving turkey at Wal-Mart. Eventually one person would slip past and with the absence of any form of defence they had a clear run to the net, normally by this point I’d be staring off into a world of my own or wishing I wasn’t surrounded be utter philistines. I’d end up reacting at the last possible second and sloppily trying to save only to let it go in and be told no more than five minutes after I said it myself I was “crap in the net”, and what did I learn from this endeavour the school tried to pass off as a lesson? I really hate sport.

Then there’s watching sport which eludes me even more, the World Cup I do enjoy, I’m not very patriotic but people representing their country in an international competition can be enjoyable. But, then there’s the football league which just bottles down to which club has the most money and thus can afford the best players. What’s the point in actually playing? Just have each club owner show the other their bank statements and be done with this pointless charade.

Then there are the fights between football hooligans which are the real life equivalent of an online flame war between Zelda and Final Fantasy, except alcohol fuelled and people who threaten to stab you actually will. People will shout and scream abuse at each other because the other person’s team won them at a game (Winners and losers, in a game? Whodathunk it?) Also why do people always have to come up with an excuse? They lost because the referee denied them a penalty or sent a player off that shouldn’t have been sent off, are you sure the other team just didn’t play better than you? Maybe you should consider your team isn’t as good as the one that happened to score more goals than you, that is the very nature of the game after all. Man up, accept defeat and put your time and effort into something more worthwhile like head butting concrete or biting fire.



“[...]at the end of the day.” ~ Every footballer EVER.