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| It's all about the fine print |
In fact, there was a time I even went to live cricket matches. I'm not talking international T-20's that only take half an hour to play. I'm talking provincial cricket nobody cares about played over 4 days. I was into it. I could even name all the Northern Districts players and half the opposition too.
I was there when the mighty Mooloo masses migrated north to end Auckland's record Ranfurly Shield run in 1993, cowbell in hand, face painted red, gold and black.
At one stage I was literally making up jobs to do around the house so I could justify listening to sports commentaries on the radio while I worked.
Admittedly, I can't claim I ever understood rugby's ruck and maul laws, but who does?
I'd get up in the middle of the night to watch the All Blacks' Northern Hemisphere matches live. (Even after I got MySky - I know, weird right?)
Sport was my religion, television and radio my places of worship.
But something's changed. It's all turned sour. I've lost my faith and I don't even WANT to get it back.
It didn't happen overnight, but slowly, insidiously, inevitably my interest in matters sporting has ebbed away completely. There are two reasons why.
Firstly, a lot of it was the All Blacks' fault. There are only so many World Cups you can crash out of without starting to seriously piss off your fans. I get that sometimes you can have a bad game and sometimes you get poisoned by waitresses, but to be ranked number one in the world year after year, to go into every tournament as overwhelming favourites and STILL keep naming Justin Marshall as your halfback even though he can't actually pass is unforgivable.
Hey, I'm just as stoked as anyone they finally, FINALLY regained the title in 2011, but I'm going to come right out and say it; they very nearly didn't. Chokers.
The other reason I'm just not that into sport anymore is the cheating, obviously. This latest farce of a fight featuring Sonny Bill Williams is the least of it - although a highly questionable result, a dispute over exactly how many rounds it was supposed to go and an old-aged opponent who may or may not have been all juiced up is all very impressive.
Boxing's always been like that though.
I think it was the cricket that turned me off first. Hansie Kronje is found guilty of accepting money from a bookmaker in 2000 and you think, "Oh yeah, one-off South African jerk, nothing to worry about." Then, not long after that, we start hearing weird stories about leaked weather information and pitch conditions, Aussies and kiwis doing the leaking. Let the murkiness begin.
Meanwhile, every Olympics uncovers another long list of dopers.
The cricket turns out to be fixed all over the place.
The baseballers are on the roids.
And cycling. Oh god, the cycling.
The more Lance Armstrong protested his innocence, the more guilty he looked. (To everybody except Mike Hosking, of course)
I wasn't even surprised when the news broke about match-fixing in European football - just sadly resigned.
I didn't actually care about Tiger Woods - off-course cheating doesn't bother me at all. But Vijay Singh's always been dodgy and now he's been revealed to be even worse than we thought, somehow bringing our own Sir Bob Charles down with him. I mean, GOLF for Christ's sake... is nothing sacred?
Like a virus, the murk has ultimately finagled its way through the ENTIRE Australian sporting world... swimming, AFL, cricket - for the time being everyone has been branded guilty until proven innocent. Trouble is, even if they do come out clean, either from drugs or the big fix, we'll never believe it now.
The results are now totally meaningless, and to be fair, they didn't really mean that much in the first place given it was only a game. It was the contest I always found compelling, sportspeople performing at their absolute peak to try and better their opponents. Extraordinary human beings achieving what we could only dream of, representing us on the field, court or track. Doing the things we'll never be strong enough or fast enough to do for ourselves.
Except, if they're doing it by cheating, I don't want them representing me, and if they're not representing me, then where does my interest lie?
Not with sport, not any longer. If I want to waste my viewing time wondering what's real and what's not, I'll catch the latest episode of Alcatraz. I'd feel a bit of a fraud giving the Black Caps shit for being useless if it turns out they've been doing it deliberately.
I'm not going to be caught out that way, so I quit. I used to be a sports fan, but when you don't know who to trust, it's time to leave them to it and find something else to do.
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| Please tell me this was real |
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