It hasn’t been a great
summer for British sport. England falling before the quarter finals at the
World Cup, Andy Murray crashing out of Wimbledon and Mark Cavendish taking
himself out of the Tour De France in the first stage have all, I would suspect,
left British sports fans very unhappy.
And yet……
And yet despite the
failure of our national teams, this hasn’t seemed to stop people from rolling
out in force to support our boys regardless of the end result. Thousands of
pounds were spent on tickets for Wimbledon and the World Cup, not to mention
the amount spent getting football fans to Brazil. And the coverage of the first
stage of the Tour was staggering to watch. Crowds packed three or four layers
deep lined the route, not only in the towns that the cyclists passed through,
but out in the countryside as well. In fact, on the moors the crowds were so
large that there was only a very narrow gap for the competitors to pass
through.
What is it about sport
that seems to inspire this much devotion in the populace? The same was true of
the Olympics two years ago. Even people like me – who find sport confusing and
really really don’t get the appeal of it -
found ourselves drawn to the Olympics. Not just the opening and closing
ceremonies mind, but the actual events. “How did we do in the X?” words that
the rest of the year rarely leave my mouth suddenly became a central part of my
vocabulary.
I imagine that in the
end it is all about togetherness. Sport can be the ultimate unifier. Most
sports – with the exception of some like grouse shooting and polo – are
unaffected by such things as class, education or background. At a football
match it doesn’t matter if you are high flying city stockbroker or a milkman.
All that matters is which team you support and what goes on down on the pitch
for ninety minutes. Then at the end of the day, regardless of where you are
going home to, all that matters is who won and who lost.
Of course this doesn’t
mean that we aren’t disappointed when we lose. We still want to win of course,
to show that we are better than everyone else – especially as we invented most
of these sports – but at the end of the day, as cliché as it sounds, it really
is the taking part that counts.
Sport brings us
together in a way that not much else can. It gives something solid, real and
straightforward to invest our collective belief in. At the end of the day,
whatever else happens, someone will win, someone will lose, and we’ll either be
miserable or ecstatic. But whatever the result, for ninety minutes, or four or
so hours, or however many sets, the country will be joined together, all
believing in something, all able to forget the scandal and the austerity. And
maybe in this current climate, we all need something to do that.
