*Ø* Blogmanac | Phillip Adams on sport



I looked at a rugby match to research my appearance here today, and it’s bloody bleeding obvious, the problem. There’s one ball and all those blokes; it doesn’t make sense. Given them all a ball, and they’d all settle down, there would be none of that awful conflict, no aggression flowing over into the stands. It doesn’t make sense.
Phillip Adams, Australian writer and broadcaster, on sport Source

There are four absolute prerequisites for this planet to get anywhere in what might well be the few years remaining.

As long as TV, agribiz and religion hold their preeminence, the prospects for peace, Nature and prosperity are slim. The fourth factor that must be removed is competitive sport. More on this on another occasion.

I was pleased to find out yesterday that Australia's – if not the English-speaking world's – most interesting 'public intellectual' Phillip Adams, is also aware of the importance of the sports factor. On an execrable radio program I chanced to hear, interestingly enough called The Sports Factor, Adams was a guest for once, rather than the interviewer, and the topic was Can you love sport and think at the same time?

I didn't know until then that Adams has a progressive analysis of sport (though I'm not surprised, as he's among the Australians with the clearest understanding of what's happening), and was delighted to find that he does. Unfortunately, the doyen of broadcasters sounded somewhat tired in the discussion, and despite making some incisive remarks, he was far from his scintillating best. On the other hand, his antagonists on the panel failed to sparkle at all, one of them sounding as though, he had, in preparation for the formidable Adams, rehearsed Whistler-Wilde-style repartee for a week and a half, but not quite pulling it off. Adams even when weary (and unsportingly set up to be outnumbered by opponents) was more than a match for the pro-competition touts.

One regrets that the topic under discussion was not designed to allow for analysis and criticism of the more serious negative value of sport, which is not that one cannot think and love sport at the same time. The problem with sport is that virtually without exception it is based on competition, at a time that the survival of the planet depends on its exact reverse. Cooperation is what needs to be taught children now, yet worldwide they are inculcated with methods of opposing and beating others – a form of child and planet abuse if ever there was one.

Despite the flimsy excuse for a radio discussion, it was encouraging to see a debate on the few pros and many cons of sport at all, because this "fourth factor" in preventing catastrophe – this Fourth Horselaugh of the Apocalypse – is scarcely on the intellectual agenda at all, and is even missing from the discourse of almost every progressive forum today. More power to Phillip Adams's arm, and let's hope we hear much more on the sports factor, from him and other media figures. They will need courage to challenge the mainstream myths that hold our species back, but what else is worth fighting for – tin trophies and badly printed triangular rags?


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