Events | 2009.07.11
Sporting behaviour? Best ask Freddie and the gougers | Mark Lawson
Corinthian integrity may have long left our games, but they still manage to construct strange ethical codes of their own
Although we accept that language changes over time, it still seems startling that quite so many English phrases – "sporting behaviour", "it\'s not cricket", "captain of the First XI" – once identified athleticism with integrity. But – even in a world in which we accept that champion sprinters and cyclists have medicine cabinets that make Michael Jackson\'s look like a homeopathy shop – a struggle still goes on to referee what\'s right.
This week, the court of sporting opinion has taken on three fascinating moral questions. Should the blinding of an opponent be a legitimate tactic in rugby? Is it the done thing for a cricketer to have such trouble waking from the night before that he almost misses a motivational visit to the graves of slain soldiers? And are tennis players taking advantage by having their thighs rubbed during change of ends?
In each of these cases, a professionalised, monetised and televised game clashes with the residual belief of some fans and journalists that sport is not war by other means, but friendship.
The introduction to international rugby of a gameplay previously associated with Gloucester in King Lear is the most extreme of these debates. All of us who favour the round-ball version of the sport have had to endure the smug lectures about the greater decency of the recreation that began when some public schoolboy ignored the handball rules. On the fields with the H-shaped goalposts, we were relentlessly told, rivals and supporters sat side by side in the stands in friendly solidarity and everyone called the referee Sir.
This pastoral idyll has often seemed compromised by the number of matches which lead to all leave being cancelled in A&E departments. But the image of rugby as a sort of tea party with more mud was decisively shattered, during Saturday\'s test match between the British and Irish Lions and South Africa, when the warmly mutually supportive fans watched "Sir!" treat as a minor disciplinary offence an action which, if attempted on the high street, would bring a trial for criminal assault.
Improbably, there then followed a serious debate over whether Schalk Burger\'s eye-gouging manoeuvre should be a yellow or red card offence. His speciality was initially defended by his coach, although he later claimed that these remarks had, like Luke Fitzgerald\'s eyes, been taken out of their proper context. However, we football hooligans will now feel entitled to say, as politicians do, that we\'re not taking any more lectures from that lot.
Even John McEnroe at his most competitive never interfered directly with an opponent\'s ability to see line calls and, in tennis, the current scandal is not over injuries but their treatment. Andy Murray was accused of exaggerating a sore thumb to buy time during a warm-up tournament and his fourth-round opponent, Stanislav Wawrinka, raised eyebrows by receiving, from a trainer between games, a thigh massage so lengthy and intense that the cameras eventually cut away, presumably mindful of Ofcom guidelines on family viewing. Other players this week have delayed matches by up to 10 minutes as their signs of vitality and hydration were checked by a courtside doctor.
What has happened here is that civil law – the All England Club\'s fear of litigation under health and safety legislation if a player swoons or dies from exhaustion – has introduced a chink in the laws of the game, allowing the possibility (although this has never been proven) of building into tennis an ice hockey-style time-out.
And, because all new sporting tactics are extended and perfected, the risk is that tiring Wimbledon contenders will soon attempt a Schalk Burger on themselves or an opponent in order to gain an hour\'s down time while opticians and eye surgeons attend.
Tennis, incidentally, offers the most elegant example of rule-bending. After unforced errors, Andy Murray screams "Focus!", a word which brings the same plosive satisfaction as a near-alternative, without risking disciplinary action.
Euphemistic expression also figures in this week\'s cricketing controversy. England captain Andrew Strauss acknowledged that Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff "stuffed up" by almost missing, after what seems to have been a strenuous night, a visit to the military cemeteries at Ypres, a pre-Ashes motivational trip borrowed from a similar exercise by the Australians four years ago.
There are many oddities here. The idea that men might be persuaded to bowl or bat better by the reminder that blokes their age died for the nation is already peculiar and becomes more so when we remember that, after stopping to acknowledge the Anzac heroes, the Aussies suffered a rare series defeat. At a time when football is trying to play down any association between sport and war – especially around England v Germany fixtures – it seems unwise for another game to be exploring the metaphor. It\'s probably a good thing that Germany doesn\'t play top-level cricket.
We should also probably hope that neither the Lions nor the Springboks visit Boer war sites before tomorrow\'s Test. If they get any more pumped up, it might be the last thing they see before their eyes are gouged out.
• This article was amended on 3 July 2009. The original referred to the British Lions. This has been corrected.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]e-gouging-rugby-sporting-rules
