Some people just don't like sport
It was a reminder that there are people on this planet that cannot stomach any kind of sport. They loathe it even more than Nobby loathes techno-pop music, cellphones and television reality shows.
One suspects the portly British actor Robert Morley was also less than enthusiastic about participating in sport. He once complained: "The ball is man's most disastrous invention, not excluding the wheel."
In Nobby's schooldays a long, long time ago, there were kids who would start shaking with fright at the very thought of taking part in a sports session. Sometimes they feigned sickness, but usually they were forced to play, something that wouldn't happen these days, I might add.
One such fellow was nicknamed "Pansy" because he was a bit effeminate and hated any form of sport. We were playing softball one day and the batter whacked the ball which hit Pansy right in the nuts. The poor fellow slumped to the floor as if he had been shot, yelping like a wounded puppy. The response of all the other kids _ and incidentally the games master _ was to collapse with laughter. Sport can be cruel.
Someone who definitely was not a sports fan was novelist George Orwell who commented: "Sport is an unfailing cause of ill-will." Orwell expanded on this in his book The Sporting Spirit. His observations: "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words it is war minus the shooting." He might have had a point.
The allusion to war on the playing fields is a recurring theme from those who feel strongly about the bad influence of sport. Novelist Aldous Huxley had similar thoughts: "Like every instrument man has invented, sport can be used for good or evil purposes. Used badly it can encourage personal vanity and group vanity, greedy desire for victory and even hatred for rivals, and intolerant esprit de corps and contempt for people who are beyond an arbitrary selected pale."
After watching some recent NFL games, perhaps Orwell and Huxley were not far off the mark.
Standing up for sport however, was American judge Earl Warren. Talking about newspapers he commented: "I always turn to the sports section first. The sports page records people's accomplishments; the front page has nothing but man's failures."
George Bernard Shaw also saw sport as playing an an important role in stemming violence in society, He observed: "It is a noteworthy fact that kicking and beating have played so considerable a part in the habits which necessity has imposed on mankind in past ages that the only way of preventing civilized men from beating and kicking their wives is to organize games in which they can kick and beat balls."
And that's how it all started. People headed for football stadiums on Saturday afternoons where they were allowed to let off steam and behave like complete imbeciles, shouting abuse at players, referees and opposing fans. Psychologists argued it was better than staying at home and beating up the wife.
Of course one's attitude to sport may vary depending on the degree of participation. Comedian Bob Hope had a perceptive comment to make in this respect: "If you watch a game it's fun. If you play it's recreation. if you work at it, it's golf."
Perhaps the problem is that we take sport too seriously. Grown men and women chasing around after various-shaped balls can look pretty stupid after all. Yet some football fans are depressed all week if their team loses.
Maybe former Canadian athlete Bruce Kidd had the right attitude when he said: "We should stop preaching about sport's moral values. Sport, after all, isn't Lent. It's about the pleasure of the flesh."
The last time Nobby tottered out onto the football field it did not exactly feel like "pleasure of the flesh." There certainly wasn't any pleasure involved the following morning attempting to get out of bed.
