I Hate All Things Sport

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The theme for this month’s Spark – Preston true stories open mic event was sport. My first thought on hearing that was that as I hate sport I might not have anything to say, but I quickly realized that my sport-aversion was itself a story. I am a couch potato in terms of personal sport and fitness. If couch potatoism becomes an Olympic event I may well be a future medal winner. I don’t just dislike sport, I despise it. I’m Anti-sport in the same way the Antichrist is anti-church and Anti-matter is likely to cancel out matter. I particularly loath football, the true opium of the masses Marx attributes to religion, and more prayers are told for football goals than for real life and spiritual ones. At work in various jobs the whole conversation is dominated by the ‘glorious game’. When living in Manchester I would inevitably be asked from day one at a new factory, warehouse or call centre, ‘which team do you support?’ I’d point out that not being a fan of football I have no team. This is paramount to blasphemy and heresy to many. I would be burnt at the stake in the penalty area of some stadium or other if left to many fans. I have been asked ‘If you were into football, which team would you support, Manchester City or Manchester United?’. I decline to elaborate and then find myself sent to Coventry as no one knows how to talk outside of football banter. I make the most of my chance to retreat into a good book during breaks and lunches. One co-worker asked me if my dislike of the footie meant I am gay. I reasoned that this waas outside my sense of the definition of homosexuality and that if I was gay, seeing men in shorts running round on a muddy field, grappling with one another for 90 minutes plus would have at least some attraction for me. My logic simply condemns me further to the level of the Inferno reserved for outright weirdos. School cross country was the worst participant sport I knew. It was really cross-swamp, and eventually got stopped when two lads had to be rescued from the mud by the fire department. Fortunately for me, a friend used to invite me and a few other mates to break away from the runners to have biscuits at his mum’s while we watched Pebble Mill and we joined on with the runners as they returned to the school, trying our best to look as exhausted as everyone else. I’m amazed we never got caught. Cricket was equally horrid, and aside from being torture to watch, my skills at all but batting were shocking. I was particularly bad at bowling as my aim endangered anyone not immediately standing where I wanted the ball to go. On the one occasion I successfully hit the wickets dead-on, the batter kicked off so much about it not being fare on him because it was me that the teacher gave him a second chance, ignoring my own fuming tantrum over it. Golf, as Mark Twain noted, is just a good walk ruined. Swimming is just fun if splashing about in water, not in racing competitively. Fishing amounts to skewering and drowning maggots, and my only catch was a rotten log. My sports motto is in many ways a parody of that used by the SAS – ‘Who Cares Who Wins’. Other speakers made sport interesting for the one night only, and I particularly liked stories about accidentally winning medals by a team who regarded themselves as hopeless, and a cyclist who accidentally won a tournament he wasn’t even entered into when he unwittingly gate-crashed the circuit’. Two ladies spoke excellently at the close of the evening to show that sport discourse is often seen as a male dominated medium, but need not be so. A terrific event, and thanks to everyone at Spark, and hosting Café, Ham & Jam (the manager had a story to share himself too). I look forward to June’s event when the topic of discussion is ‘Choice’. Arthur Chappell