I HATE ORGANISED SPORT!

Ok maybe a little OTT but this rant is aimed at the tv orientated, big money and egos end of the the scale band I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of this.

So, the recent news that the recession and semi-demise of some of our major financial players has resulted in the cutting back and even the curtailment of sponsorship deals is music to my ears.

Sure I love rugby and will watch most televised matches, but the sports I want to do involve a more non-competitive slant even to the extent that I abhor surf contests – believing that getting money for how well you can zip up and down a wave goes against the whole ethos of the sport/ pastime/ experience or whatever you wish to call it.

The usual organised sports, by and large pass me by; either I’m not interested in them or if I am they are things that cannot really be televised in the normal way. For example I enjoyed a series of programmes on the Iditarod dog sled race which transcends the usual idea of a race – in that it takes around 10 days over several hundreds of miles in extremely inhospitable conditions – ‘match of the day’ it surely aint, but it's an event that cannot be televised in a way a football match can be, and does require a level of interest that transcends the usual 90 minutes of either running around kicking something or sitting on your bum eating sweets.

Maybe that’s what it is – I don’t like the way things are neatly packaged up to conform to tv schedules and the attention spans of the more ‘slow’ in society – believe it or not there was a serious move to try and split international rugby matches into 4 quarters not so long ago, in order to appease the advertisers. They were rightly told to go take a run.

So what if the lack of advertisers sponsors etc mean that some sporting events are downscaled or even become extinct.

I’ve always thought football is alive and well and taking place on myriad muddy fields every Saturday and Sunday followed by a pint and a pie for all the players.
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