Politics

I had an interesting conversation today about one of the things that bugs me about sport, but inevitably comes up time and time again. Politics.

What do I mean by politics? I mean gossip and backstabbing, undermining of others and spreading of rumors. Basically just being a bit of a jerk. I make a point to stay away from these kinds of behaviours, however, I have been involved in a lot of sports over the years, and unfortunately I think in all of them I have come across individuals or clubs that insist on making their part of the sport political.

Now it is a bit of a generalization, but in my experience this sort of behaviour most often occurs at clubs level. In all sports, clubs are a great way to introduce athletes to a sport and give them support. When a sporting club is great it provides fun, camaraderie and knowledge to its members. However, where I see club sport going wrong is when it becomes to insular, when it becomes us vs them. Sure club rivalry is great, it brings a fun element to sport. But the key word in that sentence is fun. The rivalry should never escalate to anything more than friendly and respectful, after all sport is just sport.

When people start using club differences and rivalries to undermine others, that is when I see it going wrong. Dividing a sport, whatever it is, ultimately just makes the sport weaker. In the end sporting clubs are there to support their sport, to build it up and make it stronger, if clubs are behaving in ways that are undermining others and dividing the sport, then they are sort of missing the point of their existence. That is when I find it very frustrating.

In all aspects of life you are going to come across individuals who are inclined to behave in this way, sometimes I just think it is the way certain people are. However, I think the more we can discourage this behaviour and the more we can understand that we are all just different parts of the same big sporting family, the better off all sport will be.