All-out war on the sidelines
Created | Updated Jun 21, 2003
Just what is it with proud parents?
'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.'
I am sure that when George Orwell wrote those words in 1943, he would not have believed things might get even worse post-1984.
In the tastefully 'neutral' setting of Copenhagen's main square recently, the war certainly lacked the shooting but it did manage at least one stabbing. And this springtime in Denmark, there was plenty of outdoor cafe furniture around for the suitably Tuborged and Carlsberged Turks and Brits to throw at each other.
This was shamefully bellicose behaviour by unsporting yobbos.
But please don't think we're immune way down here at the bottom of the planet in the South Pacific: we're not. I have ventured out on a few Saturday mornings recently and I can report there is an entire species here whose members keep humanity a little below its rightful place on the evolutionary scale.
It seems they mostly come out in force during the winter. In summer, the owners of these winter personalities appear to aestivate because, during the warmer months, you would be hard-pressed to tell them apart from the rest of us.
The signal for the cocoon of normality to burst is the beginning of the winter sports season, for the members of this species only emerge when their young offspring are involved in Saturday morning rugby, soccer and the like.
Dressing up warm to keep the winter winds at bay, they head for their Saturday morning fix at the local sporting field.
From the first whistle, they start performing: some strut urgently up and down the sideline, some hop from one foot to the other, some gesticulate wildly, some rave angrily into cellphones. All holler.
The voice is their chief tool. Yes, once the cocoon has burst, the pent-up aggression releases itself via the voice, firing volleys of invective at referees, opposing players, the government, garden gnomes, passing cyclists and mankind in general.
No one escapes the abuse:
'Kill the ref'.'Maim those poofters'.'Knee him in the groin, you mug'.'Boo'
They cannot be quelled. These outbursts are, after all, their reward for six months of relative restraint: they can be heard occasionally at cricket matches but the summer manifestations are tame by comparison.
And some of the fathers and the coaches are just as noisy and abusive as the mothers. I have seen coaches who seem to think they are preparing a team for World Cup finals, yet the kids under their care are the likes of the under-seven Bumble Bees and their opponents are the Chatham Islands under-seven Stingrays. Some of the team members do not even know which way their team is supposed to be playing.
And all that is at stake is a handful of jellybeans for the Bumble Bee player of the day. Of course the kids should be encouraged... especially if there are plenty of black ones among the jelly beans... but not with obnoxious, arm-flailing, Hollywood-style aggression.
So what should we do about these loud-mouthed parents and coaches? To them, sport is not a matter of life and death... it's even more important than that. What can we do to protect other parents and grandparents whose habitat is also the sideline, whose offspring also play sport and to whom sportsmanship is important?
Well, it will obviously take more than a slap around the buttocks with a damp sporting super-star poster, so I have devised a cunning plan.
At every Saturday morning school sports fixture there should be two referees: one for the match and one for the spectators. If any sideline parent or coach becomes too aggressive, she or he should be warned with a yellow card.
If the misdemeanour persists and is grave, the offender should be red-carded, ie sent home to watch video replays of anything starring Bambi, Val Doonican, Julie Andrews or Mary Tyler Moore.
If that doesn't conquer the aggression, they should be shipped off to some neutral territory such as Copenhagen, tanked up with Tuborg and let loose among raging Turks and Brits. If Orwell's 'war' is still waged off the field of play after that, we can only hope and pray that babies start coming into the world with bigger brains and smaller adrenal glands.
