I've never been much for sport, playing or watching. Especially playing. Somewhere in my parents house, in one of several suitcases filled with photos from the last few decades, there is a picture of yours truly at the tender age of 4-5, wearing a t-shirt declaring that I am a "Future All Black." Looking at me now, some 20+ years later, that particular Kodak moment serves a comical irony. No, being on New Zealand's number one rugby team was never to be. Don't get me wrong, I played outside and climbed trees, but eventually it was video games, movies and comic books that piqued my interest.
In fact, growing up in such a sports mad country, it was easy to not only lack any interest, but also resent sports as a whole. I resented being forced to play at school, I resented the evening news spending equal amounts of time on sport as it did world events, and I really resented that any time a cricket game was on they'd interrupt my afternoon cartoons for it. My widely advertised dislike even made it to TV by way of text message, where on an episode of 'Flipside' (a long since cancelled news/entertainment show aimed at kids and teenagers) every message that scrolled along the bottom of the screen hailed the All Blacks as heroes. In my anti-sport bitterness I made the point that a hero is someone who saves a life, does something courageous, not trollies about with a ball.
Bad enough then, there was no getting away from it on my beloved TV, or that every other kid seemed intent on running with a ball too, but they wanted me to play. Good lord, I could scarcely have thought of a worse way to spend my time. It wasn't so much the physical exertion that bothered me, although that certainly didn't help sell it, but the rules, competition and inherent seriousness that came with it all. Running around at home, climbing trees, playing catch with my Dad, those will forever be some of my fondest memories, but that loathsome sense of order and competitiveness that went hand in hand with any organized sport irked me. Why take it so damn seriously, I wondered, "it's just a game".
If you read the blog regularly, you'll know that in late 2010 I moved from my home in New Zealand to be with my girl Strawberry, all the way to Canada. The move had a lot of benefits big and small, one of the smaller benefits being I had narrowly avoided the Rugby World Cup by a few short months. The 2011 Rugby World Cup would be hosted right in the heart of my home town and I couldn't imagine a worse time to be an anti-fan. Yes, Canada, my wonderful sportless paradise at the top of the world...except for all the hockey.
For Strawberry's benefit, I'd give hockey a shot. It took some time, but hockey slowly became less than not completely uninteresting. It's fast paced, which instantly made it better than a lot of other sports, the players fight a lot and people often fall down, brownie points in my book. As I began to learn the rules it became more interesting to watch, if only because I could tell what was going on (in both the game and the conversations at work). After a good few games I even found myself clapping enthusiastically when the team scored. Still, I couldn't quite forget the things I didn't like.
I wanted to be excited, to cheer and leap off my seat, but the closer I got to it, the more I knew, the more things I found to dislike. The hypocrisy, the anger, the conditional loyalty, none of which are unique to just hockey. With so much negativity surrounding sport, at least in an admittedly (perhaps overly) cynical view I couldn't see the point of investing myself. I couldn't see why anyone would give so much emotion, so much money, so much time, so much of their life, to something so pointless.
With somewhere in the range of twenty years worth of contempt for sport, an epiphany was short coming. Then I remembered those days throwing a tennis ball back and forth with my Dad. There were no rules, no trophies, no fans, why bother? Heck, you couldn't even win at playing catch, and if it's not about winning, what the heck could sport be about? Oddly enough, I already learned this lesson back when I was sporting the Future All Black t-shirt. It's about a common goal...so to speak.
Human beings are social creatures, and we love a good cause to rally behind. As much as we hate our enemies, we love to love the person standing next to us and cheering with just as much gusto to see our enemies defeated. Knowing one person shares your hope strengthens your own, and seeing several thousand others makes you part of something bigger. Like anything, sport is not without it's problems, and on it's surface the people running around hitting each other are still doing nothing more than playing a game. Or just doing exactly what it is they're paid to do. Sport is also about strangers high-fiving each other in the street, about families roaring excitedly at the TV, about heated and enthusiastic discussion, about gathering with friends. About playing catch with your Dad.
I'm not sure if I'll ever go so far as to be a full blown fan, or ever lose all my cynicism, but I think I've figured out what sports fans already knew. At the heart of it, the point isn't to get the ball in the net or see who can scream louder at the TV, or even about ruining my afternoon cartoons. The point is bringing people together. And that's pretty darn special.
