November – The Sporting Gooch

By Alasdair McClintock on November 24, 2015 in Other

So once again the sporting gooch descends upon us. November, a cantankerous time of year – as exemplified by its Scorpio star sign – that thankfully only rears its ugly head once every twelve months.

The dearth of good sport in November makes it a troubling time for the average Australian sports fan. Sure, in the Northern Hemisphere things are just kicking off, but if you’re watching an EPL game at 3am on a Monday you’re either a poorly paid sports journalist or an alcoholic. Quite possibly both.

The fact that the Melbourne Cup is the highlight of the month illuminates the fact that there is so little else going on. The Melbourne Cup goes for just over three minutes; what the hell else are we meant to do for the other 43,197?

Footy season is over, cricket hasn’t really kicked in, the A-League is underway but it’s too early in the season to get excited (if you ever really can), and we’re pretty much left to watch Friends repeats on our Friday nights.

What else are we to do? Have dinner with real friends? Speak to loved ones? Read a book? Familiarise ourselves with Australia’s foreign policy? I think I’d rather revisit the fledgling stages of Chandler and Monica’s romance. Did Joey really say that? Ha ha, isn’t he just a blissfully ignorant, philandering prick?

Perhaps it is a good thing. It does give one time to regroup and assess the year that was and the year that is to be. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come may point at your gravestone that reads ‘Gary Gerbil – Sports Fan – Not Really Missed’, but I don’t think he would be so naive as to miss the real reason we spend hours watching talented athletes ply their wares against one another.

Sport is escapism. If it is anything else for you, you are doing it wrong.

Sport is a way to forget that hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing for their lives from Syria and there is very little we can truly do about it.

Sport is a way to ignore the fact that there are severe economic repercussions in a capitalist world and to completely succumb to our ideologies would ultimately undermine the good we were trying to achieve.

Sport is a way to avoid the inevitable arguments about why the world is so messed up and what we should be doing, despite no one actually having a perfect solution.

Sport is a way to ignore the fact that ‘a perfect solution’ sounds uncomfortably like something a neo-Nazi might say.
And sport is a hell of a lot healthier than heroin.

So bring on December, I say, so that I don’t have to dwell on these things that I can do nothing about apart from chip in the little money I can afford in the hope that the charity I give it to isn’t completely corrupt.

We can’t all be heroes, but we can at least pretend our sportspeople are.