A wise person once said about sport, the more involved you become in the industry the further away you become from the thing that you made you want to get involved, the game itself. It is a very true statement.
Sadly for many that distance has meant that they have lost sight of the fact that sport is and always will be about the contest between two individuals, a group of individuals, or between teams.
It was the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin who famously said “the important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in Life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.” This is a quote that is often used. It is a quote that taken literally today seems outdated but in its true essence is in fact as relevant today as it was 100 years ago. Of course to win a Gold medal now is life changing, the rewards that come with that success can mean that an athlete may never have to work again, thanks to the financial spin offs. That is why many will do whatever it takes to win, even if it means cheating.
It is interesting that with the passing of time that the second part of de Coubertin’s quote is often ignored, or omitted. If you keep it with the sentence above it is incredibly relevant today just as it was a century ago. The sentence is, “to spread these principles is to build up a strong and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity.”
How we as a society, and a sporting society, need that today.
Over the weekend we have seen Australia’s cricketers disgrace a nation. Ball-tampering in cricket has been going on at all levels of the game for decades. Yet few teams have actually admitted to making a conscious decision to tamper with the ball. What has made the situation so hard to take is firstly that the least experienced player was given the task of tampering with the ball, no doubt because it was believed the cameras were less likely to be on him. However, more damaging was the fact that it was the Australian team who were cheating so blatantly and in such a pre-meditated way. Australia, rightly or wrongly likes to see itself as a nation that ‘plays fair.’
The sad thing is this episode is one that is endemic in modern day sport, the need for athletes to cheat.
We have seen it in Athletics with big name athletes testing positive to drugs that are deemed to enhance performance. Tennis too has seen the same, as has cycling. One of the big problems facing sports in which athletes use drugs to improve their chances of winning is that those testing the athletes can only test for the drugs they know will enhance a performance. Those supplying the drugs are one step ahead, they are developing performance enhancing drugs that the testers may not yet be aware of.
The problem with most of the sports in which athletes are found guilty of taking performance enhancing drugs is that the punishments are simply not a big enough deterrent. Bans need to be longer, or for life. These people have cheated and they are damaging the image of the sport.
No one can have damaged a sport more than Lance Armstrong, and cycling is still trying to pedal out from the shadow he left over the sport.
Away from drugs in sport football has to be one of the games that has gradually destroyed itself by not coming down hard on cheats. The number of players feigning they have been tripped, or hit in the face has grown to ridiculous proportions. The rolling around in agony when they haven’t even been touched has become farcical. The conning of referees is out of hand, and yet Football does little to punish those who cheat. If the powers that be see that a player has dived to win a penalty, in other words they have cheated, that player needs to be suspended for a long period such as five to ten games. A decent amount of time out of the game will damage the team, and will make coaches start to take the Brian Clough approach where the coaches tell players not to dive, and to respect the referee. Teams want their best players on the park. Sponsors want their best players on the park. So if a cheat is ruled out for a long period of time they will soon have to change their ways or they will find themselves moved on in the next transfer window or the club will lose sponsors.
Cricket was for so long the benchmark for being honourable and doing the right thing. Hence the expression, “It’s just not cricket.” There was in most cases an honesty to the game, if a ball did not carry for a catch the fielder would admit the case. If a batsman edged the ball he walked. Slowly these values have been eroded. The betting scandals started the rot, then as the money in the game rose, the sledging on the field at times crossed a line. It became more personal. Now we have a situation where one of the top teams in the world has admitted that they decided that they were going to cheat to try and win a match.
The question is when did sport lose its integrity?
It is easy to say that it all started when more money started to come into sport. When the players started to be paid vast comes of money. Suddenly there was a price to be paid when you lost.
Some will tell you that the more corruption those in the game saw at the top of their sport, amongst those charged with running the sport, the more they were prepared to ‘bend the rules’ to suit.
FIFA’s corruption has to have had a rolling effect within the game. The lack of accountability at the top of the game is reflected in the lack of accountability from those who cheat on the pitch. Maybe those in power are afraid to throw mud at the players for fear of what will come back their way.
When it was revealed that the UCI received donations from Lance Armstrong the whole administration of the sport was under the microscope. Rightly or wrongly many felt that they could now understand how he avoided detection for so long.
In Australia The NRL took a strong line when it came to the Melbourne Storm breaking the salary cap, another form of cheating, and they were stripped of their 2007 and 2009 Premierships and their 2006, 2007 and 2008 minor Premierships.
Yet when it comes to football in 2015 the Perth Glory were thrown to the wolves when they breached the salary cap. They were fined $269,000 and barred from entering the final series, ruling them out of possible silverware and Asian Champions League qualification. Yet in 2006 Sydney FC was fined a record $129,000 and deducted three premiership points after being found guilty of a number of salary-cap breaches, including paying player agents ‘bungs.’ The club had won the inaugural Hyundai A-League the season before when these offences occurred but they were not stripped of their title. At the time the FFA chairman Frank Lowy and director Phil Wolanski had financial interests in the club.
In 2011 it was revealed that Sydney FC might again have seriously breached its salary cap during the 2009-10 season, in which it won the A-League grand final. The A-League’s then senior operations manager, Matt Phelan, recommended sanctioning the club, but allegedly the federation told Phelan he should adopt a different approach that would ensure Sydney FC would have no case to answer.
Was this unwillingness to take appropriate action, due to the FFA’s ill-fated bid to host the World Cup, and the old proverb people in glass houses should not throw stones?
Sadly one has to ask whether there is integrity in sport today?
Sure there are some athletes who possess integrity but their actions are frequently not given the coverage they deserve.
So where is sport headed? Unless Government’s that fund many sports through grants or via revenue from lotteries take a strong stance and cut funding for major indiscretions, nothing is likely to change. Unless Sporting associations, clubs and coaches make a stand and punish severely those who cheat, fans will be left feeling disgusted.
The irony is these sporting bodies want fans to watch, they want fans to tune in on television and via various other devices, but fans will continue to switch off if the contests they are watching are compromised. Fans want to see an honest contest between two opponents, and may the best man, woman or team win. The minute that contest is affected by cheating, you lose a large percentage of those fans.
The backlash that has come against the Australian Cricket team is evidence of that. The players involved may be stunned by the reception that awaits them when they return home. Whereas some nations may celebrate an act of cheating and claim that God had a hand in it, the Australian public takes pride in doing things fairly. They may hate losing, and will blame referees, umpires, the weather etcetera rather than admit they were beaten, but they do not like cheats.
We featured former wicket-keeper Greg Dyer on podcast 33 and he discussed how a grounded catch, that he was unsure had carried, as good as ended his career. He was certainly never forgiven for it, and that happened 30 years ago.
The world has changed a great deal, as have our values, but sometimes it pays to take heed of those who have lived. Before he died aged 106 in 2015 Sir Nicholas Winton, gave some sage advice. Sir Nicholas was a British humanitarian who organised the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War, an act that was only discovered in 1988. He was knighted in 2003. He was in fact a very good fencer and had hoped to compete at the 1940 Olympic Games in Tokyo, but the war saw the Games cancelled.
“There are only two things to save the world today,” he said, “one is ethics and the other is compromise.” It is time the sporting world, athletes and administrators realised that sometimes compromise can be good, but that without ethics you have lost everything.
