The Beauty of Sport

In the past two months two sporting World Cups have come to an end and it is fair to say both were a resounding success. So why are so many sports hell-bent on trying to convince sports fans that new formats of the games they love are needed?

One of the reasons that football has such universal appeal is the simplicity of the game. It is a sport that anyone can play. There is the minimum amount of equipment needed and the rules are fairly basic. That is why across the globe jumpers have been used as goalposts for centuries, and various makeshift balls have been created from screwed up newspapers to tin cans.

Even when Football has looked to create a smaller version of the game it has in the main kept the same rules. There is no sudden change for fans to adapt to. Hence Futsal has its own huge following. After all most of us at some stage have played a game of football in a confined space, and it is here that the true craftsmen and women hone their close control of the ball.

Many will tell you that football in recent years had lost its universal appeal. The corruption within FIFA finally being exposed and the sums of money changing hands was enough to turn anyone off the game. Then there has been the spiralling transfer fees and wages demanded by the world’s top players, and how their egos have grown in line with their salaries.

Yet Russia 2018 showed why sport is so great. It is a great leveller. Those teams with the big name players and the big egos all fell by the wayside early in the competition. Those nations who had crafted teams with a pride to don the colours of their nation were the ones who rose to the surface. They were the ones who ignited the tournament. Sure, some of the teams playing in the semi-finals had some big-name players, but none were bigger than the team. None pushed themselves into the limelight ahead of their team mates. They were a credit to themselves, and their countries, and a credit to the sport. They restored faith in the game at a time when it desperately needed it.

Hot on the heels of the FIFA World Cup came the International Hockey Federation’s Women’s Hockey World Cup hosted by England. In all fairness a far smaller event than the football World Cup, however a huge event in the sporting calendar for those involved in the sport.

Once again the crowds flocked to the games. Tickets were for a session, and meant that fans saw two games per a session. Not surprisingly all tickets for England’s games were sold out. This was no mean feat with the stadium being expanded to hold 10,400. In addition, by the time the quarter-finals came around they too had been sold out along with the semi-finals and final.  England Hockey should be applauded for their marketing of the event, but once again it proved that there is a hunger for top quality sport.

This event was also helped by the fact that those nations with little or no funding were upsetting the traditional powerhouses, who have historically received more financial backing. India’s women were in the quarter-finals as were Spain and Ireland. Spain ranked outside the top ten at eleventh picked up the bronze medal, and Ireland the second lowest ranked team in the tournament at 16th progressed all the way to the final and claimed silver.

As good as this was for the sport and ticket sales, as ticket touts were out in force for the final, an event almost unheard of in Hockey circles, it could have been seen as being a negative for the sport with the FIH’s Pro League due to launch in January.

Both Spain and Ireland, two of the medallists at the World Cup will not be participating in the Pro League. The Pro League is meant to be a competition featuring the top nine women’s and men’s teams in the world. Yet of the top nine teams at the World Cup, only five will be participating in the new competition.

While many will see that as a negative, it is indeed a positive as it shows once again the beauty of sport. That it is not always about how much money you have, or the facilities and support staff. On the day it comes down to playing as a team, taking your chances, never giving up, and believing in those around you. It comes down to being the best team. These teams have shown that they can compete with the best, and hockey as a whole will benefit.

The truth is it is not just happening in these two sports. In 2019 England will host the Netball World Cup. The vent is a little under a year away, yet over UKL1.3million worth of tickets have been sold already and over 7000 people have applied to be volunteers at the event.

So when we look at these two World Cups and the goodwill generated, the passion, and the discussions they generated one has to ask why would anyone want to create a hybrid form of any game?

Sports administrators often use the same buzz words as politicians, ‘development,’ ‘co-operation,’ ‘collaborative’ and of course ‘financial benefits.’

The Big Bash and T20 Cricket as a whole has been a financial success, and the reason is once again because the game itself is played under the same rules as all other forms of cricket.  Yet the big questions are has it increased the number of people following Test cricket or State and County Cricket? Has it helped grow the numbers of participants?  A buried report will tell you that it hasn’t.

The England and Wales Cricket Board have now opted for another version of the game with only 100 balls per team, which few in cricket are impressed with. Thankfully they quashed the plan to allow 15 players to be used.

It is one thing to have a vision for progressing a sport. There is however no point in having a vision if that vision does not align with your audience, or in most cases with sport fans, who are essentially your customers. If what you are proposing is not what they want or expect, then it is doomed to fail.

As these two recent sporting events have shown, fans/customers want and expect simplicity. In the world today they are already overstimulated with the hectic pace of the modern world. They are bombarded with messages and various forms of communication, yet when it comes down to it everyone wants to escape for a couple of hours and be not only entertained, but transported to a place where dreams can come true, where the unlikely can happen and where the underdog does sometimes win.

The International Olympic Committee has been trying to sell “new” Olympic sports as having had to be introduced to make the Olympics appeal to a new younger audience. Yet the two World Cups prove that traditional sports have their place and their appeal if packaged and promoted properly.

The IOC claims that the reason we need abbreviated versions of sports is because the youth of today have a short attention span. This is again complete spin and an insult to the younger generation. Watch a young person on their X box, or playing a game or watching a movie on their phone, and there you will see first hand an ability to focus for a decent length of time.

There is no need for change just for change’s sake. As we have seen with both Football and Hockey the sports have had to evolve, they have had to incorporate changes that will ultimately make the sports better, such as the introduction of video technology, but the essence of the game remains the same. It should always remain the same, because it is based on those rules and laws that sport creates moments of history, memories that last a lifetime and are passed on from generation to generation.

It was 28 years since England fans had seen their football team in a World Cup Semi Final. Croatia had never played in a World Cup Final. Ireland has had few teams across any of the sports played in the Emerald isle make the final of any World Cup, so what their young women achieved was a moment to be treasured not just by the players, coaching staff and their families, but by a nation and all who were fortunate to witness it.

Sport is full of wonderful moments and stories. Bring them to the surface, and promote the wonderful sports that already exist, and realise that there is no need to re-invent the wheel.