I've always loved sport - especially football and cricket - but as I get older I am increasingly of the mind that sport and associated physical activities are becoming a modern day - and perhaps unhealthy - obsession in the hearts and minds of many. My much loved Guardian newspaper - allegedly a "serious" paper - has page after page of sport related news every day which suggests to me that many want to read about it, but makes me increasingly wonder and worry about the priorities of much of the public. If I go to my local Lidl supermarket I walk past a gym with huge windows and no matter what time of day or night I pass the place is full of people pounding the treadmills, trancelike, their eyes glazed over, almost a modern day act of religious homage. And, watch the crowd at a Premier League (or any other league) football match and you will see thousands of man-babies dressed in their replica team shirts emblazoned with their hero's name, all in various stages of ecstasy or rage, losing all sense of reason and maturity when their team scores a goal or when something upsets them.
Of course, all sport has many desirable benefits: fitness and good health, healthy rivalry and fun, a sense of comradeship and team spirit but as George Orwell famously said when talking, especially about professional sport "Sport is war minus the shooting". Orwell was not wrong; in the end for both participants and audience most sports are intensely tribal and innately aggressive. This manifests itself in many ways: on the field aggression and violence on the terraces, tribal (and often obscene) chanting and hooliganism, hate mail sent to officials and others and a myriad of other less desirable" virtues". Even children's football is today not exempt from unpleasant on and off the field misbehaviour or worse.
The great Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankly once said "If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing" and he quickly followed that up with perhaps his most famous comment: "Some people think that football is a matter of life and death. I can assure you, it's much more important than that." Mmmm! - as a football player, a manager and a man Shankly was second to none but he was dreadfully and awfully wrong in these comments. Football or any sport is not more important than life and death except in the minds of grossly immature and easily influenced people, nor is being second "worthless". Once one accepts that winning, being first, is the only thing that matters then it is a recipe for feelings of mass failure (for there can only be one winner) and a potential springboard for aggressive response; if being the "winner" is the only criteria for my or my team's success then I will fight - perhaps aggressively - use any means, to ensure that I win.
A couple of days ago my much loved and home town football team, Preston North End, put out a notice on social media and in the local press requesting and warning that fans should not sing/chant various songs during matches. Anyone doing so, the Club said, would be banned from games and there may be police involvement. Songs and chants have always been part of football but when I read the words to some of these modern match day "hymns" I was horrified at their content. These were not simply humorous or mildly mocking ditties of the type I knew as a teenager (e.g. "2, 4, 6, 8, Who do we appreciate? .....Preston!" or sung to the tune of the Rolling Stones' hit 'Not Fade Away': 'You're gonna know how it's gonna be be.......Blackpool 2, Preston 3") but crude verbal pornography aimed at the opposition or the players or match officials. And as I read the vulgar and obscene words I wondered what must go on in the hearts and minds of those who happily chant and sing them. I wondered do these man-babies use such language and thoughts in their homes, to their children, or to their mothers? Are they not ashamed of what their parents might once have been ashamed of? Have we as a society fallen too far - does football (or any sport) justify this? And if so, is it worth it? Is it worth the pages that my Guardian and all the other media outlets devote to it, is it worth the obscene amounts of money involved in modern day sport and especially in Premier League football?
In the end football or any sport, is a pastime, an entertainment, a game to be enjoyed either by playing or watching - nothing more, nothing less. It might provide certain benefits like physical fitness or the opportunity to join with others in a positive manner, a "team spirit", a sense of belonging and these are all well and good and highly desirable. But when aggression, loss of "reality", violence, obsessive behaviour, or hero worship become part of it, when it becomes the be all and end all of life and reason then it has no place in society.
In his 2006 novel "Kingdom Come" author JG Ballard prophesied with huge accuracy the world of England 2026 where so many have taken sport to obsessive limits. Ballard's futuristic, but in the event wholly accurate, tale tells of marauding gangs of men in their replica football shirts, attacking those of other ethnic origins, surrounding the homes and businesses of those they pick upon, and waving flags of St George as they make their way to the next big sporting event to fill their minds and waking hours. It is a prescient and alarming work that depicts many of the events we saw in 2025 in places like Essex. Ballard wrote: "Sport is the big giveaway. Wherever sport plays a big part in people's lives you can be sure they're bored witless and just waiting to break up the furniture." The twenty years since 2006 have shown that he was not wrong.
But it doesn't have to be this way; enjoyable though sport might be, there are other less provocative and potentially less aggressive outlets for the emotions and mankind's "need" to come together.
This letter in today's Guardian(click link) Guardian Article and the article it refers to are exactly right. There are many other ways of getting the same benefits provided by sport: comradeship, team spirit, achieving a goal, physical and mental well being etc. The arts in particular provide positive frameworks for people to come together and experience the emotional, social and mental well being that sport might provide without the negative and competitive aggression and tribal "baggage" Dancing of various kinds, making music - be it classical or heavy metal, performing in a play or being part of a theatre back stage "team" can and do provide exactly the same opportunities, experiences and outlets that sport might provide.
When I watch an orchestra, choir and soloists perform (say) Bach's B Minor Mass I see hear and enjoy great talent and skill combining perfectly with many individuals and groups to produce this glorious music - it's the ultimate team endeavour as well as one of the great musical wonders of the world. Like a great football match it can and does uplift, inspire, bring you to tears and excite your senses, drain your emotions and at the same time give a huge sense of camaraderie and social fulfilment to know that you are enjoying it surrounded by other like minded people. When I watch a ballet I see dancers, their physical skills honed to levels that Premiership footballers can only dream about, perform with hugely talented musicians to create a visual entertainment that is infinitely more stunning and beautiful than anything that can be created on the football pitch. It's the same when I go to the theatre to watch Shakespeare or the opera to watch "The Magic Flute". And the bonus is that when I'm enjoying a Mahler symphony or the ballet Swan Lake, or Shakespeare's King Lear I am surrounded understanding, mature, knowledgeable and enthusiastic fellow travellers and not by belligerent, immature, bull necked man-babies in their cheap but grossly overpriced replica football shirts screaming obscenities and losing all sense of reality and any grasp of basic humanity. Sport is not and must not be an excuse for excess, for permitting behaviour on the street or in wider society that is an affront to the ordinary man or woman. The behaviour now accepted as alright because it is just blokes enjoying their sport on the streets, in pubs and in football stadiums when a goal is scored or when the referee gives a decision with which the crowd disagrees would be considered unacceptable, a sign of mental breakdown or worse in bygone days or in any other aspect of human life - in the supermarket, in the workplace, at the cinema, in the street. It has no part of what should be an enjoyable pastime, a friendly rivalry, a coming together of like minded enthusiasts.
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