Odd Shaped Balls
Far from telephone number salaries and big name footballers making lurid headlines, small towns like my home patch of Hartlepool have a different tale to tell. A massive force of volunteers in sport for the love of it make a priceless contribution. What they do for young people growing up is priceless. Learning how to lose with dignity and win with pride and humility is a very useful life lesson. It’s also crucial for young people to have adults they respect caring about their progress and helping them to grow up the right way. I don’t know if anyone’s ever done the research, but from simple observation it seems to me that youngsters who are heavily involved in sport rarely get into bother. Part of the reason is that wearing the club badge or tie means a lot – and letting it down is not accepted. While most rugby club tours wouldn’t qualify for angelic status, there are still standards on how to be daft – but not malicious. Some of my sharpest boyhood memories are sport related – and a return visit brings the echoes of yesterday back so quickly. I learned rugby on the pitch at Henry Smith School which made the wastelands of Siberia seem tropical. It’s on a headland sticking well out into the North Sea and winter days produced a magnetic effect which focussed the Arctic winds onto our few square yards. One winter morning, us youngsters had assembled on the frozen pitch, topped off with ice and drifting snow. The bitter wind, full of ice daggers, was coming in on a horizontal jet stream and our thin rugby shirts did little to stop the cruel spears biting through. One very reluctant player, Howard by name, suddenly piped up; “Excuse me sir, may I suggest that the conditions are most inclement and unsuitable for physical activity?” The rest of us were staggered – it simply didn’t happen that you questioned Sir’s wisdom, even politely. “Gentlemen” replied Sir to the thirty or so of us, “You will lie on the pitch and roll to the half way line. Begin.” As one, we began. At the half way line, in pain beyond belief, we were told to roll back to our starting point. We then, at last, stood up – cold, wretched, and shivering. Sir surveyed us and continued; “Gentlemen, anything which now follows will be sheer pleasure.” By home time, it had entered school legend; no-one ran home to whinge about it, and I’ve had the tale recounted with a fierce pride by many veterans of that day.
|
A visitor to a planet scanning through the daily papers would pick up the notion that much sport is about big money and bad behaviour.