The world cup and other sporting delights
Patrick Smith, a columnist in The Australian, said it very well:
We are drawn to sport for many reasons. Some are no different to those that take us to art and literature. That is the chill of seeing what is born in the imagination made substantial and beautiful. There is no reason it cannot be a forehand as easily as it can be a sentence or a stroke of a brush.
First there was the football World Cup. An added piquancy was provided by the presence of the Australian XI and by their heroic struggle against the odds to win a game or two and qualify for the elimination rounds (something that Team USA was unable to do). In fact the story of the first fortnight was the rolling out of the Socceroo bandwagon as those previously apathetic to the doings of footballers started water-cooler conversations that included the names of Viduka, Kewell, Cahill and, of course, Guus. Guus (pronounced something like "Hooosss") Hiddinck is the Dutch super-coach employed by Football Australia to help the previously under-achieving team do better. With the help of those who dispelled the Curse of Mozambique, he got them to the finals and then through the first round. "Guus your daddy?" became our motto of the moment. Guus-mania was interesting to watch; as we advanced the cult of Guus grew and his infallibility and genius became legendary. Right up to the time of that penalty.
Now, I know that the immediate reaction was "those cheating Italians robbed us" as Grosso took an obvious dive in the penalty area and the referee fell for it but the second reaction was to start second-guessing our Guus over his tactics in the second half of the Italy game. He held two replacements in reserve to use in extra time when their fresh legs would have made all the difference but the last-minute penalty meant no extra time. Had he used his available replacements earlier, the team might just have scored the winning goal. The time between infallibility and the fall is barely liminal and, as Leo Solomon noted to Sydney Ellen Wade, "There is never an egg timer around when you need one". Nor was there one for your man Guus after the Italy match: from Guus to Goose in one easy step.
(Lest you think that the universe is out of balance because of the "G" for "H" pronunciation for Hiddinck's given name, you need to know that one of the leading cyclists in this year's Tour de France has the patronymic Honchar but his name is pronounced "Gonchar", thereby neatly redressing the "G"/"H" balance in the cosmos.)
My personal interest in the World Cup declined rapidly after the elimination of Australia. As I have noted earlier, football is not among the greatest of spectator sports and, when you have teams playing to ensure that they don't lose, rather than that they win, the problems inherent in the game are exacerbated. There was hardly a thrilling game in the elimination section of the comp - with the possible exception of the Italy-Germany semi-final - and I contented myself with viewing the ends of games that concluded around the time that I would have normally arisen from bed in any case.
In the light of the renewed interest demonstrated by the crowds at live sights and the high ratings for Socceroo games, it will be interesting to see if the local game can leverage the success on the world stage into greater success at home. Already it looks like the Asian Championship qualifier against Kuwait, in Sydney next month, will have a much larger than expected crowd (perhaps even a sell-out) and that the local A-League will attract bigger crowds, even if they remain below the levels of club AFL and NRL and Super Rugby. But I still have other problems with football. The obvious deficiency made clear by the World Cup is that cheating is rife and that no genuine attempt has been made to rid the sport of it. Too many good players stage for free kicks and too few referees call them on it. So someone like Grosso, who showed in later games that he did not need to dive to score a goal, can decide the outcome of a game by one foul act. And that leads to the second lesson: while the scoring opportunities remain limited, the outcome can be adversely affected by single incidents. There is cheating and staging in other games (as there is in life) but such incidents even out over a higher scoring game and have less influence on the outcome. So, while football remains a game where 2-1 is a goal-fest, and 0-0 is common, it won't become the franchise sport in Australia. It will remain a minority sport, played by lots of youngsters who will grow out of it before they reach their majority.
Million dollar arm and 10 cent head
Another lesson thrown up by the World Cup was a prime example of flawed champion. Crash Davis described 'Nuke' LaLoosh as having "a million dollar arm and a ten-cent brain". In the football tournament, this phenomenon was personified by the ultimate act of football madness of Zinadine Zidane ("Zizou" to his fans). Zizou, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, has been, arguably, the greatest footballer of the last decade. While his career has appeared to be in decline of late, his play in the knock-out phase, particularly against Brazil, was a return to his earlier genius. Yet he may well be better remembered for his last act on a football field: a vicious head-butt to the sternum of an opponent, following an apparent racist sledge. The ability to control a football pedally does not impute a full-spectrum human being. David Beckham is but one example of the football genius, who seems more like the football idiot savant. Wayne Rooney, dismissed from the tournament for stomping an opponent's groin is another example of flawed genius; and the sight of Harry Kewell enjoying a post-match hissy fit with the referee after the Brazil game (where he had personally buggered Australia's best opportunity to win by kicking the ball well over a vacant goalmouth) suggested another candidate. But it was Zizou's tournament, no doubt. He has a history of what we might charitably call temperamental behaviour, although the last two syllables of the epithet seem more apposite. It's just sad that his last act wasn't one that expressed his playing ability, rather than his demons.
Flawed genius is sometimes expressed by such acts of madness and violence and sometimes by the "choke". The last month or so has seen two classic chokes in the same event. Until quite recently, Phil "Lefty" Mickelson has been tagged as "the best golfer never to win a Major" and in the last few years he's won three. Colin "Mrs Doubtfire" Montgomerie has inherited the title. Both are renowned for the quality of their game (their million-dollar swings) and, equally, for their ability to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory (ten-cent brains). Coming to the seventy-second hole of the US Open, each led the field by a stroke and needed to par the hole to win; a bogey would still have qualified them for a play-off. Each double-bogeyed the hole. Australian golfer Geoff Ogilvy, demonstrating how we have absorbed the lesson taught at Salt Lake by Steven Bradbury, watched them fall by the wayside and calmly collected the winner's cheque. Quoth Lefty: "I still am in shock I did that ... I just can't believe that I did that. I am such an idiot." For those of us who enjoy it when a self-proclaimed idiot demonstrates his idiocy in full view of millions, Lefty's self-immolation was an immensely satisfying moment. Not so much Mrs Doubtfire's though: Monty seems like a nice enough chap but has never been able to find the right edge of bastardry (or killer instinct) to close out a Major championship. I doubt now that he ever will. That an Aussie benefitted from all this self-destruction was just icing on the cake for this spectator.
The Swans have their own ten-cent head case, the flawed genius that is Nick Davis. Personally I blame his maladies on the fact that he played for Collingwood for a number of years before coming to Sydney. As the Swans are a team renowned for its work ethic and its no-dickheads philosophy, Davis has always stood out for the wrong reasons. From time to time he has been credited with winning a game for the Premiers, as he was last year in the elimination final against Geelong when he kicked three goals in the last quarter, one in the dying seconds of the game. On the other hand, each of the goals arose from teamwork that left the ball in Davis' hands. The problem is that he does not appear to recognise the contribution made by others and is reluctant to lend a reciprocal hand when others are in need of support or protection. He is the least effective of the Swans at the one-percenters, the supporting actions like blocks and shepherds that impinge on the ability of the other team to advance the ball or enable team mates to do so. At the moment he is spending some earned time in the Reserves. As for the rest of the recent events surrounding the Swans I will refrain from detailed comment lest I be accused of sour grapes ... or worse, except to note that a free kick count of 35-17 against is ridiculous, especially when one of the three umpires awarded 14 frees to the opponents and only 2 to Sydney. Yet the team remains in the top eight and will need to improve only a little successfully to defend their title.
Elsewhere
Wimbledon seemed to slide by with little of note to the aficionado. Even Little Lleyton did not fully explore his genius for imbecility. On the other hand, to give some space to the female sports, one of the great female ten-centime heads. Amelie Mauresmo, overcame her usual end of championship jitters to win the women's crown and the men's tournament showed again that Roger Federer is almost non-pareil in the world of sport. Rafael Nadal, the Spanish clay-court specialist, is getting nearer, but he's still a long way away.
Meanwhile the torture test that is the annual cycling Tour de France has been underway for two-weeks as I write this. The event is about to enter the Alps, so the next time I write (about 3 days hence) I will be able to comment on the likely winner. But, in the absence of Lance Armstrong there does not appear to be a capo di capi in this year's field.
[Four days later - 24 July] And no dominant team emerged either, which meant that things were rather bizarre. The four climbers to emerge in the Pyrenees were Landis (Phonak), Sastre (CSC), Kloden (T-Mobile) and the Australian Cadel Evans (Davitamon-Lotto). Their four teams should have ensured that no dangerous breakaway threatened the leaders (although I will excuse Evans because his team was working equally to ensure Robbie McEwan won the best sprinter award - in which endeavour they were successful) but first Dessel of AG2R and then Pereiro of Caisse D'Epargne were able to recover lost ground, the latter an unbelievable 30 minutes on the Peleton. This lack of team discipline and lack of direction meant that there were no certainties in the race. In the Alps, first Evans showed some weakness; then Flanders (F Landis was soon nicknamed in our household in honor of the Simpsons' neighbor) cracked completely in the second alpine stage, losing 10 minutes to the leaders. This left Pereiro, Sastre and Kloden leading, with Dessel and Evans close by. That's five strong teams who should have defended their position. If the tactics in allowing Pereiro 30 minutes were unbelievable, the tactics of the leading teams on stage 17 were indescribable (well actually easily described as "non-existent"). They allowed Flanders to get over 8 minutes in front and recovered only part of the lead in the closing stages. At the end of the mountains, Pereiro was in front of Sastre by 12 seconds and of Flanders by 30. With any half-way decent tactics from CSC, Sastre should have had an unassailable lead. Instead, the team had squandered energy in chasing stage wins. In the final time trial, inevitably, Flanders easily beat his rivals and Kloden took enough time out of Sastre to move to third; so CSC ended up without anyone on the podium.
The Tour de France is a unique event - no comparable sporting competition calls for a combination of individual brilliance and team tactics. Flanders won, in part, because Phonak devoted its whole effort to ensuring he did. On the day he 'cracked' one of his team mates, Merckx, rode with him over the last 30 minutes to ensure his losses were limited. The team then exhausted itself launching him into the break-away that got him most of his losses back. With Evans 5th and Rogers 10th (he spent too much energy ensuring Kloden's success to the detriment of his own), and McEwan winning the Green jersey, Australians did well. With half-way decent team support one of them might be capable of winning the lot in the next year or two.
[A week or so later - 1 August] Apparently everything was not quite okely-dokely with Flanders. A drug test administered at the end of the day where he gained back 7 or so minutes showed an abnormally high concentration of testosterone, and that some of the testosterone was synthetic rather than natural. This is but the latest in a series of drug scandals afflicting the sport of competitive cycling and it appears that Flanders will be disqualified. A bit of a shame that, because the recovery was one of the epics of sport and worth raving about. Now it appears that it was artificially assisted and not on the up-and-up.
Even in the unreal world one cannot always get away from realities.
First written: August 2006
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