ONE headline on a news website really caught my eye during the week. “Johnson resigns” it shrieked and for a second or two I thought Yes! But alas it was not the two-bob Trump wannabe in his Downing Street bunker but his brother Jo who has more principle in his left little toe than Boris has in his entire body.
Not for the first time I am writing a sports column at a time of undoubted national crisis and thinking to myself: why bother?
When all around is doom and gloom and genuine worry about the future for millions of people, worries that really do now include the question of how far Johnson will go in his increasingly desperate attempts to make himself an entity rather than a nonentity, what place has sport in all of this brouhaha?
Isn’t sport just part of the bread and circuses routine of our masters? Should sport not just be abandoned until we get Brexit done and dusted? Isn’t this like wartime when sport was curtailed? And to those who say that’s going too far, I suspect Johnson and his Dr Strangelove sidekick Dominic Cummings have already considered the possibility of proroguing, to use a word, the English Premier League and the Scottish Premiership just to teach the populace the lesson that they are in charge and will do anything to get No-Deal Brexit on Halloween.
After all, Home Secretary Priti Patel was adamant that free movement of citizens between the EU and UK, and vice-versa, would have to end on November 1 if there was a No-Deal Brexit. So how does she think that’s going to work for the football European Championships in 2020, with Scotland and England hosting matches and the semi-finals and final at Wembley? A lot of those European chaps and chapesses are going to want to come here, so does sport get privileges that business and Joe Public won’t?
She had to abandon that idea when legal experts warned her it could be challenged successfully in court. I wonder if those experts included lawyers for the English and Scottish leagues, which are shored up by citizens of the EU? Imagine how bare some dressing rooms would look if all the EU players were suddenly shown the door by the Borders Agency. It could yet happen, and that’s the worry.
I’ve never believed that sport and politics shouldn’t mingle. Ever since the anti-apartheid boycott of South African sport helped to change that nation, I’ve said that sport should not be subject to exceptionalism. Football, for example, had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the Middle Ages by Jean-Marc Bosman because its authorities with their vested interests refused to recognise that employment laws apply to everyone, no matter their job.
What I do say is that the confused politics of these days should be left outside stadia – for example, anyone using a football match to protest for or against the Union needs their head looked at. It all depends on the context and the background when politics becomes involved in sport.
There are times when sport really does get parked, such as when human tragedies occur – after 9/11, literally thousands of sporting events were postponed, including the Ryder Cup, which was moved a whole year down the road.
The key word there is postponed. Only a relatively few events were outright cancelled and never played again after 9/11. There was a genuine and correct feeling that the scale of the mass murder was overwhelming, but also that the world should not give in to terrorism.
I am writing this less than a week after Anthoine Hubert was killed in a Formula 2 race at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. Formula One and the sport’s governing body, the FIA, faced criticism after they allowed Grand Prix racing to continue last weekend, though they did cancel the Formula 2 sprint race due on the Sunday. No doubt the family and friends of the 22-year-old Frenchman were devastated by the tragedy, but I thought the response of motor sport was measured and probably right. Hubert was mourned in public, then F1 racing continued.
Death is an ever-present threat in motor racing, and sadly we have seen so many drivers killed over the years. But does that mean we should ban it? It’s the same problem with boxing – we know people will die each year in boxing, but do we ban it and move it underground?
Sport should never be a matter of life and death, but sometimes it is, and we usually do the right thing – pause, remember those who died and express our sympathy, and then move on, even if that appears unfeeling.
And as we are in the midst of a crisis, perhaps it is time for everyone in sport – which will be trashed by Brexit – to take a political stand.
The resident of Number 10 Downing Street seems intent on damaging sport in the UK with his No-Deal Brexit. So let every member of the Tartan Army show our nation’s detestation of the man by loudly booing for 60 seconds when we reach the 10th minute of the Scotland versus Belgium match on Monday.
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