Author: allyncarter

Well past middle age and feeling it, my last remaining contribution to society may be my bull-headed opinions. Hence, this blog.

Welsh Regional Rugby

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My Welsh Rugby Roots

I was born in Newport in 1969, so I will not try to go back further in time than that. I became aware of rugby at a very early age. My Dad was from Cardiff but was a former player at a very amateur level in Magor. I obviously have no recollection of the 1971 Grand Slam, but of 1976 and 1978, I have very clear memories. My favourite players would have been Gareth, Phil, Gerald and JPR. I was a little too young to appreciate the merits of the great forwards of the era. I started playing myself when I went to Bassaleg Comp in 1979. We had great coaches there, including Marc Batten and John Rawlins, both of whom were regularly playing for Newport RFC. Along with my long-suffering older sister, I became a regular at Rodney Parade. We did not play glamorous rugby in those days, but we were hard. Like my Dad, I played hooker and Mike “Spike” Watkins was my absolute hero. The Newport front row was fearsome – Spike, Rawlins, Rhys Morgan and the aftershave drinking Colin Smart. I loved them all. I saw a lot of Wales international games in those days as well – £3.50 for a ticket to the children’s enclosure in the East Terrace. What an education that was!

I moved to England (Birmingham) in 1987 to go to university. I watched the last couple of seasons of the Moseley club before they were destroyed by financial irregularities. I tried to stay in touch with Newport, but pre-internet it was not easy. I would see results and read the Argus when I visited my Mum, but that was about it.

I still live in the Midlands of England, but now that my kids are grown, I can afford to indulge my love of Welsh rugby. I have been a season ticket member of both Newport RFC and the Dragons for the last 5 years. I go to as many games as possible – for Newport, that’s home and away. For the Dragons, it’s mostly Rodney Parade. URC away games almost always need a passport. I think I drive something like 5000 miles a year watching Welsh rugby. I am a fan and I sink a lot of money into the system. I bought a campervan and toured France with the Wales team for the 2023 World Cup. Of more interest to the WRU, I do continue to pay the ludicrous ticket prices for the international games – even when I know we will be murdered. That’s not fun or sustainable, but I am not and never have been a fair-weather supporter.

Professionalism

In 1995, Rugby Union became a professional sport. At that time, the sport in Wales was run by a

bunch of committee men with no commercial experience at all. They were ex-geography teachers or councillors. Well-meaning, but not qualified for the professional era. . The club structure that was in place in those days was equally ill equipped for professionalism. The fixtures and league structures were very informal, but we did have much cherished games with teams over the bridge. Trips to Gloucester, Bath and Bristol were a lot of fun.

In 2003, the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU), advised by a complete arse called David Moffett, decided that the club system was not fit for purpose in the professional era. They probably had a point, but the cack-handed way that the move to five professional “regions” was handled alienated huge numbers of supporters. Fans of Swansea and Neath were suddenly expected to be best mates. In my region, Newport fans were expected to get behind the “Gwent Dragons”. It was not easy. Other regions managed to retain much of their club identity – The Scarlets were effectively Llanelli. Cardiff Blues were… Cardiff.

After a year or so, Celtic Warriors went bust and Dragons got “Newport” into their name, at least for a bit. That was the only way that season ticket sales could survive.

The Dragons

I reluctantly accepted the Dragons into my life, though retaining a keen interest in Newport RFC. Newport was completely shafted in 2017, when they had to give up their share in the Dragons and the Rodney Parade ground to the WRU. There are many Newport supporters who still detest the Dragons and that is even more true in the Gwent valleys.

Despite that, the Dragons have built up a loyal support. Come and stand in the terrace on a derby day. There is passion and loyalty. A brand has been developed over 20 years or so. David Buttress – co-owner of the Dragons and a man with a proven track record in big business – became a local hero when he finally got the Dragons out of WRU ownership, rebranded us as Dragons RFC and made the home kit Black and Amber. Success on the pitch still eludes us, but we have hope. Maybe it’s the hope that kills us, but hope is better than nothing.

Regional Success

Let’s be honest – as a Dragons fan, I have seen very little success. We did have some good times with great overseas players like the Springboks Percy Montgomery, Rod Snow and Brock Harris. We got to the quarter finals of the European Challenge cup in 2006, but we have never pulled up all that many trees.

However, during that time, other regions were successful. The Ospreys in particular with a string of Welsh internationals won a load of silverware in their first few seasons.

Wales Performance During the Four Regions Era

The whole object of creating the regions and effectively demoting the historical clubs – Pontypool, Newport, Swansea, Neath, Pontypridd and many others – was to equip the Wales national team with players capable of playing at an intense level. On the face of it, that would seem to have worked.

I loved Sam Warburton as a Wales and Lions captain, but his championing of the reduction of regions in Wales in recent years and especially pointing to the Dragons as the obvious fall guys has really pissed me off. In 2025, he claimed that he had 20 years of evidence that regional rugby in Wales has not worked. However, in those 20 years since the creation of the regions, Wales have won the Six Nations on 6 occasions, including 4 grand slams. That is a fantastic record. By comparison, the two decades from 1970 to 1989 yielded 5 Championships and 3 Grand Slams and that was the Five Nations. During the regional rugby era, Wales have also reached the semi-finals of the World Cup on two occasions. In 2019, we were top of the world rankings. That’s not that long ago. Regional rugby has worked for Wales, whatever Warburton might say. By the way, he was captain of Wales for many of those successes. Odd that he should think that system was such a failure.

This thinking that regional rugby has failed the national setup has become pervasive, but it is simply not backed up by the evidence.

Further Reductions in Wales Regions

A lot of pundits, including Warburton, as described above have been pushing for a reduction in the number of Welsh professional teams. The idea is that we cannot fund four professional regions at a level where they can really compete. It is certainly true that the Welsh teams have struggled to make a mark in the URC or recent European cup competitions. It is absolutely the case that the playing budgets for Welsh regions is much lower than for many other teams in the URC. The WRU has expected each team to have a “benefactor” who piles loads of money into the team. At the same time, the WRU has been comfortable taking loans on behalf of the teams to cover covid, to invest in hotels and has generally lost sight of what they are for.

In their new view of the world, they still want money from benefactors, but they want all the control. From the Dragons perspective, why would David Wright, David Buttress and Hoyoung Huh – all very successful business leaders – cede control to the rank amateurs running the WRU? Buttress just spent years getting the Dragons back into private control at no small cost.

Emotion In Sport

As you may have gathered, I get quite emotional about sport. I have been in the stadium for Grand Slams and they are good times. I think my single best rugby memory was the Gareth Davies try against England at Twickenham in 2015. I threw my best mate Steve up into the ceiling of the pub we were in. Steve’s dead now (pancreatic cancer), but that’s my favourite memory of him.

My point is that sport is an emotional business. Arguably there is no point in sport without emotion.

Dave Redding has just picked up the reins as Director of rugby at the WRU. In a recent interview with Lauren Jenkins on Scrum V, he acknowledged the role of emotion in Welsh rugby and called it a strength. However, he then went on to say

“I think we’re now making the right decisions at the right time. I think in any walk of life you’re always going to wish you’d done things earlier but we’re doing it now and we want people to really engage in it. And I’d just say encourage people to try, as hard as it is because it’s emotional that’s why we love the game, try and let go of some of the emotion and really cold-bloodedly analyse what we’re saying here and think about it in the round about what we want a system to look like in the future that we can all be really proud of”.

So we are supposed to be emotional for the national team, but not for the regions, which are just a means to an end. I don’t think so Dave. That just won’t work. Why would I spend £400 a year on season tickets and travel thousands of miles unless I am emotionally engaged?

I accepted a new region into my life once. It was not easy, but we play in Newport and have ties with the Gwent clubs. If I am expected to switch to another entity – presumably a team called East Wales, based in Cardiff, then I will just tell them to go and fuck themselves. I will continue to follow Newport RFC. That’s in my DNA. I might also look at clubs more local to me – Worcester have just been revived and have added ex-Dragons player Will Reed to their squad, as well as the great, though aging, Lloyd Williams, whose cross-field kick led to the Gareth Davies’ try I described earlier as my favourite rugby moment.

I don’t mean any of this as a slight to Cardiff supporters, or indeed to supporters of any of the other regions. With a few toxic exceptions on social media, fans of regions are actually closer than might be expected. Most of us want our regions to continue, but that does not mean we want other regions to be scrapped. The regional derbies are the best bit of the URC – a league created to make away support almost impossible.

I’m not certain, but I do think that my willingness to spend big money attending internationals will also be affected. I will always be a Wales supporter, but I would hate to fund a WRU that had just destroyed my team. I have not yet bought tickets for the autumn games.

Big Yellow Taxi

In the words of Joni Mitchell, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”. Ask the people of Bridgend, Neath and Pontypridd what they think of supporting a team in Swansea or Cardiff. These areas have effectively been disenfranchised from professional rugby. Are we really about to do the same to Swansea and Newport – the 2nd and 3rd biggest cities in Wales? The lesson of history is that when we take away a region, it will never come back. If we reduce to just two regions, then that will be the peak of our ambitions for evermore. The only direction is down. Do we reduce to a single team – effectively the National team – competing in the URC? That’s the ambition that Georgia has. Wales has a rich rugby history – we were #1 in the world just six years ago. We must be more ambitious than this. This is a big decision and one that cannot be undone if it fails. I urge the WRU to think again and get this right.


#FOFO

Women’s Sport

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Introduction

I have friends (and indeed a wife) for whom sport just seems like a silly notion – 22 blokes chasing an inflated bladder around a field – what’s all that about? But, for many of us, sport is a key part of our lives. It can be horrible- when my team loses I feel a real draining of energy and a sapping of morale. Over the years, I have been daft enough to follow some pretty unsuccessful sports teams, so that downer feeling is all too familiar. There is some chilling evidence linking sporting reverses with an increase in violence and domestic abuse. Sport is not always a power for good. So why is it so popular? I think there are several reasons:

Ben Stokes at the end of the best ever innings in Test Cricket.
  • The drama is more extreme than any fiction would ever dare to be. Yes there are plenty of tedious and predictable outcomes, but so too there are outcomes so remarkable that no Hollywood producer would ever sanction such a story line.
  • There is a primitive tribalism about supporting your team with a group of others. I almost used the word “like-minded”, but often we are not at all similar except for our shared passion. Chanting in a crowd is a thing of beauty, even if we are completely unreasonably questioning the parentage of the referee.
  • The highs of winning in sport, especially against the odds, are better than almost any other high I have experienced. I can’t really explain that, but it’s true. I think I would get less from supporting a perpetually successful team. The New Zealand All Blacks expect to win every rugby game they play, so there is only ever a down side for them. No team I have ever followed has been even remotely invincible, though some have been reasonably successful for a short period.

Anyway, that’s why sport is a big part of my life. I have been lucky enough to have taken part in various sports over the years, but never to any great level. I am realistically more of a spectator. For most of my life, the sport I have watched and cared about was played by men. There were some honourable exceptions in tennis, and especially athletics (think Sally Gunnel, Jessica Ennis, Kelly Holmes and others) but it is predominantly team sports that really matter to me and the profile of women’s team sports over the years has been feeble. Why is that?

Women’s sport has had a pretty chequered history. In many cases, the misogynistic governing bodies, almost always made up of wealthy, retired, elderly white blokes, have been downright hostile to the idea of women even being allowed to take part in their sport. In other cases, women’s sport has been treated with patronising disdain. A few sports provide an exception, though often grudgingly. Many of the things I have to say about women participating in sports could also be said of ethnic minorities, but for the purposes of this blog, I intend to dig a bit deeper into the role of women in sport.

History

Sport has presumably been a part of the Human condition from the very earliest times when homo sapiens came into existence and quite possibly for neanderthals before that. I guess there might have been events and displays to establish the alpha male hierarchy and all of that. However, organised sporting events are most easily traced back to the ancient Olympics in Greece, which are known to have taken place as early as 776 BC and continued every four years for the next 600 years or more.

Lunchbox

Those games were very male-centric, however. All of the competitors were male, but even worse, women were not allowed to even watch. Maybe that was because athletes traditionally competed naked. Imagine that with Linford Christie!

A caveat – I am not a sport historian and my big sister, who is, will probably be appalled by some of the over simplifications that follow.

Women were not allowed to compete even in the modern Olympics until 1920. Various bizarre reasons were cited, many of them pseudo-scientific, claiming that women, with their awkward reproductive systems and monthly cycles simply were not suited to athletic pursuits.

In the early 20th century, the mass exodus of young men to the world wars left huge gaps in western societies. Women’s suffrage is probably the most important advance to come from that period, but women also helped to fill the void of sport as a spectacle. In Britain, there were women’s football teams that attracted huge crowds. 53,000 seems to have been the most widely reported record in the early 1920s.

In the USA, there were similar tales, perhaps most notably chronicled by the 1990 film “A League of Their Own”, starring Geena Davis and Tom Hanks, which deals with a women’s baseball league during the latter half of WW2.

Hostility

Despite the popularity of women’s sport in the early 20th Century, the sporting authorities quickly mobilised to try to stamp it out. I’m sure there are many more examples of male hostility to women’s participation in sport, but I will highlight a few.

Football

It seems utterly incredible from the context of 2022, but the Football Association (FA) of England banned women’s football in 1921, stating that “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.” Similar restrictions were imposed in other parts of the UK.

Many of you will have heard of Gail Emms. She is a fantastic athlete in her own right, having competed at Badminton in world championships and Olympics (gold and silver respectively). She is also a media figure and a regular contributor to radio shows like Fighting Talk on BBC Radio 5 Live. She was made an MBE in 2009. I’m no fan of the honours system, but this helps to build a picture of someone who has been successful in women’s sport.

What is not as widely known is that Gail’s mum, Jan, was an international footballer during the time of the FA ban. She was one of a team of women who ignored that ban and travelled to Mexico in 1971 for an unofficial women’s World Cup. Only six teams – Mexico, Argentina, England, Denmark, Italy and France took part. The England team had to do so without any backing from the FA and at their own expense. They lost both of their matches, but what an amazing set of rebels they must have been. The FA finally lifted the ban on women playing football on the back of this tournament, bringing to an end 50 years of misogynistic dictatorship. That does not mean they started to support women’s football – FIFA finally created an official tournament in 1991.

Athletics

In some respects, athletics (forgetting the restrictions of the early Olympians) has been more inclusive of women, but the record is far from clean. Some disciplines were considered too difficult for women. Even now, women have the heptathlon (7 events), while the male equivalent is the decathlon with 3 more events.

Much more jarring, however, is the history of the Marathon. One of the first women to challenge this assumption was Kathrine Switzer. She ran in the Boston Marathon in 1967, the organisers of which had just assumed that no women would dare to take part. The race director physically assaulted her when he realised that a women was competing in “his” race. I encourage you to follow the link above to see how that worked out for him.

Tennis

On the face of it, tennis is perhaps the sport where gender equality has been most readily adopted. There have been high profile women (or ladies as the tennis community would prefer) in the sport for longer than I can remember. I am just about old enough to remember Billie Jean King, but even before that there was Margaret Court and many others. Tennis it seems was the sport in which women could play and be taken seriously before almost any other. After Billie Jean King, there came the likes of Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena and even a few British contributions with Sue Barker, Virginia Wade and most recently Emma Raducanu. This is far from an exhaustive list of women tennis players who have become household names.

I began this section with “on the face it”, and whilst there is no doubt that tennis has done better than most sports at encouraging gender equality, it has not always succeeded. Equal pay for both the men’s and women’s tours has long been a bone of contention. Back in Billie Jean’s day, the gap was at least ten-fold. It has closed since then, especially in the top tiers, with some of the majors offering equality.

There is a great article of pay differentials at adelphi.edu.

Tennis is not a favourite sport of mine, but I will continue with this because it is such an important example. Andy Murray is the most successful British tennis player for many decades. My Scottish friends point out that he is always Scottish when he loses and British when he wins. I’m Welsh, so amenable to such arguments, but that’s not the point here. Andy (and his brother Jamie, who is a highly successful player in his own right, especially in doubles) was coached by his mum Judy. Judy is clearly a very strong influence for Andy and Jamie. Andy has become famous for some particularly acerbic responses to interviewers that refer only to male tennis. Take a look at the following – honestly it will bring a smile to your face:

Cricket

My two favourite sports are Cricket and Rugby Union, so this is where | really get going. Women’s cricket was for years treated with disdain and contempt by a patronising misogynistic white middle class audience. The games lawmakers are the members of the Marylebone Cricket Club – the infamous MCC. They would not allow women to even join the club, excluding them from the pavilion at Lords.

Rachael Heyhoe Flint

The magnificent Rachael Heyhoe Flint (now a Baroness in a rather different Lords) was amongst the first 10 women to be admitted into the MCC in 1998. She was captain of England for more than 10 years and played for the national team for more than 20 years between 1960 and 1982. For many, even keen cricket followers like me, Rachael Heyhoe Flint was the only female cricketer we had heard of. She worked tirelessly and patiently to improve the profile of Women’s Cricket, often being subjected to degrading and insulting interviews. But, to some extent at least, it has worked.

Today the women’s game is in much better health. Several countries have a national team made up of full time professionals, with a professional league system backing up the national team. A big advance was made in 2021, with the introduction of the Hundred as a new format in Britain. I remain unconvinced of the need for a new format and I’m not sure the franchise system works in the men’s game, but there are some real advantages for the women’s game. The games are played in the same stadiums, back to back with the men’s games. Initially, you would see a small crowd at the start, gradually building as the start of the men’s game came closer, but as the tournament progressed attendances for the women’s game steadily climbed and it was obvious that many people were more invested in the women’s tournament. It was great to see mums and dads taking their daughters to watch the games and to see the daughters wearing the replica kits. That old adage of “You’ve go to see it to be it” surely means we have a generation of girls growing up to be the stars of the future.

Female cricketers are starting to become mainstream sports stars and amongst cricket fans, some have become household names. Retired cricketers, such as Isa Guha and Ebony Rainford-Brent (full name Ebony-Jewel Cora-Lee Camellia Rosamond Rainford-Brent) have been able to forge a successful career in the media as commentators and pundits for both the men’s and women’s games and have broken into the ultimate (though lovable) boys club – Test Match Special. The first woman I recall hearing on TMS was an attorney from Barbados called Donna Symmonds. She was brilliant and insightful, but the abuse she received for daring to commentate on men’s cricket is worth an article all of it’s own. Fortunately, there is one on Caribbean-Beat.

Rugby

Rugby has always been seen as a sport for tough, hairy alpha males and certainly in England (outside the south west, before my friends from Gloucester, Bristol and Bath start shouting at me) as the preserve of the public school educated. Against that backdrop, Women’s Rugby has struggled to gain the profile that we see in other sports, such as cricket and tennis.

There is now a professional system in England, but in supposedly rugby-mad Wales we are just starting to see a system emerge. In November 2021, the Welsh Rugby Union finally handed out 10 full time professional contracts. Ten! That’s not even a full team. TV coverage of the women’s game is sparse to say the least and there has been very little attempt to stage women’s matches at the same venue and day as the men’s matches. There have been a few attempts to do this in English club rugby, but more – much more – needs to be done.

In spite of this, women’s rugby still manages to produce some absolute superstars. I am going end this section with a bit of a celebration of one of them -Jasmine Joyce. If Jaz was doing what she is doing in the men’s game, she would be as the most famous person in Wales, but she has to play in England because of the lack of a professional setup in Wales. She has it all – pace to burn, determination, skill, elegance and brutality. She is lethal in attack, as shown in the following compilation.

But how about this for committed defence? I actually prefer this compilation.

Conclusions

I could go on forever – there are numerous sports I have not mentioned. Think of darts, where Farron Sherrock is now competing in what were thought to be men only tournaments. Think of boxing. I have previously spoken of my ambiguous and frankly inconsistent attitude to boxing. I will put my hand up and admit that I am too squeamish to watch women’s boxing, whilst my amygdala still seems to enjoy watching two men attempting to inflict brain damage on one another.

Anyway, I must bring this rambling to some sort of conclusion. Overall, I am optimistic about the future of women’s sport. Almost all sports seem to be going in the right direction, though some are much slower than others. I think (or is it hope) that there will be a virtuous circle that accelerates this process. The more women’s sport enjoys a higher profile, the more girls will see it and be encouraged to participate. Greater participation leads to still higher profile – onward and upward.

There are threats to that perhaps overly optimistic picture. The biggest threat is social media. We all know that social media is 90% toxic, but there are some trolls, keyboard warriors or morons – call them what you will – who seem intent on putting down women’s sport. Find any posting about women’s sport on Twitter and you will find a stream of dickheads commenting to the effect that they won’t be watching that. It’s bizarre – they must sit there in their squalid bedrooms all day searching for posts about women’s sport so that they can put it down. I hope and believe that this will be generational and that like all biases, this dislike of women competing in sport will fade into history, but I fear that will not happen fast. Those of us who love sport must fight for more coverage for women’s sport – it’s not enough to just passively enjoy it.

2021 Ashes Humiliation

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I have just watched a total humiliation of England at the MCG and I’m not sure where I go from here. There are some mitigating circumstances in this series – covid bubbles, no warm up matches, some injuries, but really only Jofra Archer mattered.

Losing at Brisbane was unsurprising, but the manner was disappointing. Losing in Adelaide was worse and bizarrely, Joe Root seemed to blame the bowlers in a match where the batters failed in both innings.

Melbourne was a complete capitulation. To lose by an innings (and more) where our bowlers, especially Jimmy Anderson, dug deep and limited the Aussies to 267 is unbelievable. Scott Boland, on debut, ended with figures in the 2nd innings of 6 for 7 off 4 overs. He bowled well, but nothing about his bowling merited those numbers. England’s batters were just rubbish.

A day at the Boxing Day test in Melbourne has been on my bucket list ever since I came to know what a bucket list is. My mate Simon lives in Melbourne and I was planning to go this year, until covid. Anyone can see by looking at previous posts on this blog that I am by no means a fair weather fan of English cricket. I have stayed up for most of the nights in recent weeks, even taking some time off work to make that possible. I now question whether doing that for the remaining tests makes any sense. If the players don’t care, why should I? But do the players care? I think they do, but do the administrators? Maybe that’s a more relevant question.

What’s Wrong with Test Cricket in England?

England won the One Day World Cup in 2020 by the narrowest of margins after an amazing innings from Ben Stokes. In 2021, there was an international T20 world cup for which England were well fancied, but fell at the semi final stage. Preparation for both of those tournaments was intense, meticulous and highly professional. Eoin Morgan would have it no other way.

By contrast, the test team have been messed around throughout the covid period and even before. Players have been “rested” and “rotated”, especially those that play in multiple formats, in favour of the white ball guys. In early 2021, England did well in Sri Lanka, but they were weak and England relied heavily on runs from Joe Root. The subsequent series in India, after a great start in Chennai was disastrous, with key players being sent home at completely inappropriate times. India are the best team in the world, but we seemed to be arguing that this series was less important than the T20, or even the distant Ashes. India came to England later in the year and were seemed about to beat us in a series until they decided to run away from the last test to ensure that they were okay to play in the IPL. Gotta look after the income.

That last point is exactly what is wrong with test cricket. The short forms make more money, so are prioritised. The ECB introduced the “Hundred” this year. I watched a couple of games at Edgbaston, but really, what’s the point? No connection with the team (or franchise), essentially T20, but slightly shortened for no adequately explained reason. Frankly, a load of bollocks. It prepares our best batters (think Liam Livingstone) to have a fantastic career in the various T20 competitions around the world, but what does it do for the Test Team? It destroys it!

Why? All the best dates in the English cricket calendar are dominated by short forms, which means that real cricket (red ball, first class, whites, 2 innings, 3+days) is played in snow in April or the rain in September. If they even get onto the field, conditions are so bowler friendly that we just see a bunch of 75MPH dobbers taking loads of wickets. No place for spinners or real pace bowlers. What preparation for Australia (or India) is that?

Where Now?

Two matches left in Australia. Honestly, I wish they would just come home. Maybe covid will result in that. I really don’t want to commit to any more sleepless nights, but if England are playing, I will. I can’t help myself.

Longer term, there will probably by a “review” after the 5-0 whitewash that is inevitable now. The outcome of the review will be almost nothing. Probably, Chris Silverwood will be stripped of his “supremo” status which was always doomed – Ray Illingworth was the only previous incumbent to have that degree of power and he failed, too. No change at all will be made to the schedule of the season – they are just too invested in the Hundred.

Destined to fail.

Boxing

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Boxing and TV

I am a sports fan. I enjoy most sports – some more than others, but in general, I can see something in most sports. Sport offers drama and excitement that cannot be matched in any other form of entertainment.

Historically I have really enjoyed boxing. I am just about old enough to remember the extraordinary fights of Foreman, Frazier and Ali. My peak for boxing included characters like Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler. Then came the extraordinary and compelling Mike Tyson and the British challengers, like good old Frank Bruno. Domestically, we had Nigel Benn, Chris Eubanks and others.

There was a  huge shift in boxing in the early 90s, when TV coverage largely shifted to pay-per-view. I paid for one bout, which was where Mike Tyson bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear. I felt completely robbed and have never paid for another fight. On the whole, the biggest fights take place in the US, often in Vegas. As a result, they usually happen at in the early hours UK time, so going to a pub to watch a match is not practical. With a handful of exceptions, therefore I have barely watched a boxing match on TV in the last 20 years. The few exceptions would include the awful fights arranged by Audley Harrison that were on the BBC.

I listen to boxing on the radio, but it really is a visual sport. Pay per view does not seem like a clever move to me, but I’m not familiar with the numbers and the economics.

As I write this, I am listening to the Anthony (AJ) Joshua fight with Andy Ruiz. It’s interesting, and the BBC commentary from Mike Costello. It’s very well done. but the only sport where radio is better than TV is cricket.

Boxing and Brain Damage

Many sports are becoming increasingly concerned about concussion, which ultimately is a form of brain damage. Both cricket and rugby now have strict concussion protocols, which mean that a player suspected of having suffered concussion can take no further part in the match, and may be laid off for a period of weeks. These are impressive developments.

Football knows that heading the ball is a problem with regard to dementia and brain damage, but is baffled as to how to proceed without wrecking the game.

Boxing, however, is in a much worse place. Fundamentally, the aim of boxing is to inflict brain damage on your opponent. Think about that. It’s not nice. Do we really want to hark back to gladiatorial fights to the death? That’s not much of an exaggeration. Every year a small number of boxers die due to brain damage inflicted in the ring. Others suffer from dementia in later life.

Boxing Positives

I am well aware that boxing brings a discipline to lots of young kids in gang-ridden cultures and that is a clear positive.

Conclusion, or Lack Thereof

I remain ambivalent on many of these issues, which goes against my usual opinionated approach. My head tells me that boxing should be banned, but I cannot help but be interested in fights like tonight’s, which AJ just won on points. In the end, I cannot believe that boxing will still exist as a mainstream sport in 20 years.

A Testing Day in Delhi

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I have just had an incredible day. Pound for pound, I cannot remember a more experience packed day. I attended a day at a test match in Delhi, between India and Sri Lanka. That’s the headline, but it is worth describing the whole process in some detail…

Journey to the Stadium

I left my hotel at 0800, determined to travel to the stadium as a local would. I asked the concierge for directions to the nearest Metro Station – the beautifully named Iffco Chowk. They immediately tried to order a car for me, but I insisted that I wanted to walk. They looked at me as though I were a complete weirdo (perhaps I am), but eventually conceded that walking was possible. There’s a lot of construction going on around the hotel and the roads were pretty dusty and dilapidated, but perfectly walkable. It was only a mile or so to the station, but this still took me past five or six casual games of cricket, played, quite literally, in dust bowls. No wonder this country specialises in spinners. This is clearly how loads of the locals spend their Sunday mornings. As well as cricket matches, I also encountered a surprising number of feral dogs. Sadly, they are so starved that they have not got the energy to be threatening, but they do present a sorry spectacle.

At the metro station, I was puzzled as to how to pay for my journey. I had read about buying a smart card, similar to the Oyster Card used in London, so I got into a queue at the ticket office. At least, I thought I’d got into the queue, but the fact that I’d left a gap of about 9 inches between myself and the person in front of me was a clear signal to one local that I was not at all serious about this whole queuing business and he squeezed into that gap. When I finally got to the front of the queue, the ticket seller looked at me as though I was a complete halfwit and pointed me to another queue where they dealt with smart cards. I transferred to the new queue, taking care to press myself against the body of the person in front. Sadly, this did not stop me from being out-flanked by one determined queue jumper, but I eventually got to the front of this queue, too. I handed over a surprisingly small amount of cash, got my card and I was away

Happily, I’d had the foresight to install a Delhi Metro app on my phone, which by now was receiving data from the cheap sim I’d bought at the airport and, impressively, I got on the right train first time. I had a relatively unremarkable journey – the train was uncrowded, so I got a seat. However, one small tale is worth relating. A young lady plugged her phone charger into the socket above my seat. Not long after, the train took a bit of a lurch and momentarily caught said young lady off balance. She stumbled backward, pulling the charger out of the socket, whereupon it landed directly on my head creating a loud “donk” sound, clearly heard by all in the coach. My thick skill was unharmed, but the girl was both mortified and humoured. She tried desperately to apologise profusely, through increasingly hysterical giggles and in the end simply fled to another part of the train, deciding that she did not need to charge her phone that much.

One change later and I arrived at the Feroz Shah Kot;la stadium. Loads of rickshaws competed for my attention, but I studiously ignored them and walked the 250m to the stadium entrance.

Getting into the Stadium

At the stadium, I was greeted by a surprisingly large number of heavily armed soldiers most of whom wanted to check my bag. I was more than happy to comply with their wishes, partly because I had nothing more dangerous in my bag than a cap, sun glasses and a jacket, but mostly because I make a habit of obeying heavily armed soldiers. All told, my backpack was checked manually and x-rayed four times before I finally got to the turnstile.

At the turnstile, I presented the printout of the ticket that had been ordered online by a friend. The actual ticket had not arrived in time, but the printout had a QR code and looked official. The people at the gate looked a bit confused and called for a supervisor, who came over and also looked confused. Eventually, he pointed his scanner at the QR code, beamed with pleasure when it scanned successfully and he let me in.

box
View from my Box

Once into the ground, I quickly found the stairs that took me to the hospitality box that had been booked for me. This was a medium sized room, with a window looking out over the oval. There was a fridge, with complimentary soft drinks and an array of snacks (or “bitings” as the Indians call them). In front of this were 40 or so seats, mostly already occupied where we could sit and watch the cricket. I grabbed a coke (I was not yet 10am) and headed out to get a seat.

The Match

This was day 2 of the test, and as I sat down, Virat Kohli, the current captain of India and one of the very best batsmen ever to play the game was on 178. He quickly and elegantly moved into the 190s. The tension was considerable. A score of 200 would make him the scorer of the most double centuries by any captain in the history of test cricket. As is often the case, his scoring slowed, but he eventually passed 200 and the response of the crowd was electric.

score
Kohli on 198

I confess that I have long harboured mixed feelings about Indian cricket fans. They obviously love the game, but test matches are often poorly attended, whilst shorter forms of the game attract the really huge crowds. The capacity of the Feroz Shah Kotla ground in Delhi is just shy of 50,000. It was not full on this particular occasion, but I bet there were more that 30,000 in attendance. By comparison, Lords in North London, the so-called home of cricket holds just 28,000. Moreover, the cricketing knowledge of many of the people in the same area as me was considerable. They were obviously a bit surprised to find a white bloke (gora in the vernacular) in their midst, but politely tried not to notice too much. I think I was one of only 4 white people in the ground. The other three were Nigel Llong – one of the umpires, David Boon – the match referee and the Sri Lankan Coach, Nic Pothas. However, I gave up my seat at one point so that an old couple could sit together and at this point my neighbours seemed to think I was alright. I got chatting to a few of them about cricket – not just the match in front of us, but also the Ashes games being played in Adelaide at the same time. They were full of commiserations for England’s woes. I was made to feel very welcome and encouraged to eat as much of the complimentary food as I could hold. All this before lunch.

Lunch

At a cricket match in Britain, lunch is usually taken between 13:00 and 13:40. Here in India, matches have to start much earlier, due to the shorter days, so lunch is taken at 11:30. I was not the least bit hungry, having stuffed myself with Samosas, pakora and other bitings, but I was starting to think that a beer could be justified. I went off in search of a bar. It did not take long to realise that unlike in English grounds, where you can walk around the entire stadium sampling numerous bars, here I was confined to a very small segment of the stadium and this segment did not feature a bar. It turns out that cricket in India is essentially a non-alcoholic experience. I can only assume that this is changed when the Barmy Army are in town – who would turn down that commercial possibility, but it rather turned my world on end. I’ve never spent a sober day at a cricket match before. Back to the box, then.

Air Pollution

lights.jpg
Vultures circling the lights at midday.

With the locals cheerfully counting down each run required for Kohli to get his triple century, he rather unexpectedly got out for 243. This was greeted with stunned silence, apart from the enthusiastic guy sat next to me who eloquently muttered “Oh Shit!”. Thereafter, the game dragged on a bit with India pushing for a big total, but the Sri Lankan fielders had taken to wearing pollution masks. The air pollution in Delhi at the moment is a real problem, with the air quality index being rated somewhere between “unhealthy” and “hazardous”. You don’t really get to see the sky, as there is a thick pall of brown smog hanging over the city. Indeed, at 13:00 on an ostensibly cloudless day, the floodlights were turned on, due to the poor light.

The lights, however, did not help the Sri Lankans. Their fast bowlers, in particular were having to leave the field more and more and eventually they were unable to field 11 fit players. How much of this was for real or how much was an attempt to manipulate the situation in a match they were losing, I cannot say. However, the locals were incensed and started loudly calling the Sri Lankan manhoods into  question. It was like they know the pollution in their city is terrible, but they don’t want foreigners drawing attention to it. The Sri Lankans got to the point where it seemed they could/would not play on, so Kohli dealt with the situation by declaring. His body language seemed to imply that the Indians were man enough to bowl in a bit of smog, even if the Sri Lankans were not.

masks
The Sri Lankans Leaving the Field

 

This did at least give me a chance to watch some Indian bowling and they quickly got a few wickets, to the delight of the crowd.

Getting Home

spitting

I left a few minutes before close of play, fearing a crowded metro. Unfortunately, so did 15,000 other people. It truly was as crowded as the worst London rush hour on the Northern Line that I have experienced., but there was no hassle or unpleasantness. I was grateful, however, for the occasional announcements reminding people not to spit inside the train. Coupled with the signs in the stations forbidding spitting, I have to conclude that the metro is no place for an enthusiastic spitter.

Not yet feeling that I’d had enough experiences for the day, I got off one stop early in a busy shopping district. I wandered in the mall, after the obligatory x-ray of my bag, but there’s not much of interest in an Indian shopping mall, that you would not find in a mall in the US or Britain.

It was now full dark outside, so I decided that it would be too intrepid to walk home, so instead I set about engaging a rickshaw. These come in various shapes and sizes, but most are converted motorcycles with a green and yellow canopy on the back. However, a young lad with a bicycle rickshaw caught my eye and he quickly closed the deal. 50 rupees to take me to my hotel, a mile or so down the road. I’m no lightweight, so he was always going to have to earn his corn, but I don’t think he realised that you could not get into the hotel the most obvious way, but instead had to cross a dual carriage way, travel a mile past the hotel, turn around and come a mile back. This he did without complaint, apparent fear or lights, with cars screaming past us on both sides with horns blaring.

I got there in one piece, felt that 50 rupees did not sufficiently represent my pleasure at having survived, so overpaid generously. We all went away happy.

What a day!

Take the Pace off the Ball

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T20 is Killing Cricket

Today was T20 finals day at Edgbaston. My team – Warwickshire, or Birmingham Bears as we must now say in this rather sad American Baseball influenced era – have made it through to the finals. As I write, it seems unlikely that they will win, but that really does not matter. What is winding me up is that the commentators are constantly using the phrase “Take the pace off the ball”.

What this means, is that the most effective way to prevent a team from scoring runs is to bowl mediocre, but accurate medium pace tedium. I have written before about my love for fast bowling. It is the most exciting thing in cricket. Real spin bowling and skillful seam bowling are also amazing to watch, but nothing competes with out and out pace. Medium pace trundling, however, is shit. And yet that is exactly the type of bowling that prospers in the age of T20.

T20 is all about batting. We see artificially shortened boundaries and the shortened form simply places very little value on a wicket. It’s about sixes, fireworks and noise, but bowlers cannot expect any rewards. In this year’s IPL, 8 of the 10 best paid players are batsmen. 1 is an all rounder and only 1 is a specialist bowler.

Bowlers are completely undervalued and pace bowlers might as well give up. There are no fortunes to be made in the IPL or elsewhere for bowlers that can regularly exceed 90 mph. And yet these are exactly the type of bowler that we need in Test Cricket. A wicket is incredibly valuable in real cricket – you need to take 20 wickets to win a test match. That means you can have real, fast bowlers charging in with an attacking field, prepared to concede some runs, as long as they take wickets. That is cricket.

T20 sucks.

It is no surprise that the 2nd best bowler in England – Stuart Broad – was not picked for his county, who just won the T20 final. This is because he is a proper bowler and would therefore be expected to be carted all over the ground. Ridiculous.

Let’s consider history. Few people disagree that the best cricket team ever was the West Indies of the 1980s and 90s. No doubt, some of their batsmen, most obviously Viv, would have been incredible at T20. But how would the bowlers have fared? The likes of Roberts, Marshall, Holding, Croft, Garner, Ambrose & Walsh would have struggled in T20. How sad is that?

Why are we surprised that no such players are coming through the system any more?

 

Post Truth Penalties

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It’s been a while since my last post, and in that time, a new phenomena seems to have arisen. “Post Truth Politics”, coupled with it’s close cousin “Fake News” have come into daily use. Lying in public office is nothing new, but the last year or so has seen an apparently uncontrollable rise in its use, to the point where I feel that some penalties are now required to discourage it.

Unparliamentary Language

Now, anyone who has a reasonably functional brain knows that bears shit in the woods, the Pope is catholic, we all have to pay taxes and eventually die, and of course, that politicians lie. It’s a bizarre fact that the one thing an MP cannot accuse a fellow member of the house  of being is a liar. This attracts the most severe sanctions and is termed Unparliamentary Language. Profanity is also banned, which is a shame because most politicians fully deserve to be called fucking liars.

Brexit

In the United Kindom, the campaigns associated with the June 2016 referendum on the decision about remaining within or leaving the European Union brought this whole post-truth thing to a head. I make no secret about the fact that I voted to remain and and that side of the argument lost the vote. That is not the point of this article I am much more interested in the lies that were told during the campaigns. ON BOTH SIDES. What follows is a short list of the most obvious lies that I can remember.

Remain Lies

David Cameron stated categorically that he would not resign as PM, whatecameronver the
outcome. However, just one day after the referendum, he did resign. Was this a lie? Yes. But in my opinion, it takes the form of one of those regular lies that politicians tell, and perhaps have to tell. To have said otherwise would have weakened his position.

Much more reprehensibly, George Osborne stated that if the referendum resulted in a “leave” vote, then he would have to impose an emergency budget immediately after.  However, Osborne did not impose such a budget, even though he remained as Chancellor of the Exchequer until 13 July, three weeks after the vote. George was in a very senior position in public service and he told thiGeorge-Osborns particular lie as part of Project Fear.  This was  a very clear abuse of his position and should have resulted in severe penalties. Instead, this nasty little liar commands huges sums of money providing consultancy to his friends in the city. Presumably he coaches bankers in the art of dishonesty.

Leave Lies

goveMichael Gove, once voted Britain’s most punchable man, repeatedly stated that he would not stand for the Tory leadership if David Cameron resigned. Yet, just seven days after the Brexit vote, he announced that he would stand. The fact that the tories rejected his candidacy to such an embarrassing extent does not detract from the fact that he was, is and always will be a lying little shit.

It does not need me to point out that Nigel Farage is a mendacious twat, but for completeness sake I will do just that. There are countless examples, but his iconic denial of the £350m per week dedicated to the NHS just hours after the result had become clear was perhaps the most stomach churning moment of the entire campaign. He was not alone. The entire Vote Leave team, including Boris Johnson had endorsed the battle bus. However, Nigel does deserve special criticism, for the Hitler-esque poster of desperate refugees fleeing a humanitarian crisis.

EU referendum

What a truly vile individual this is. And now, he’s cozying up to Donald Trump. Birds of a feather…

The Pointless Labour Party

The above list seems largely to feature right wing politicians. That’s mostly because Jeremy Corbyn wanted to keep as low a profile as possible during the Brexit campaign. He is anti-European, whilst most of his party, at least the parliamentary part of it is pro. Corbyn did not want to draw attention to this split, so pretended to be pro-remain but was so luke-warm in his support that it was clear what he really thought. Such cowardice is an obvious, pathetic lie. It deserves no explicit punishment, but it all adds to the overall unelectability of Corbyn’s party.

Possible Controls

I started this blog saying that maybe it’s time for penalties to discourage lying in campaigns and public office. Here are some possible thoughts on this:

  • Anyone putting themselves forward as a candidate for public office must  not lie during their campaign. If they can be demonstrably shown to have knowingly lied, they should be removed from the election and barred from running for public office for a period of 5 years. “Knowingly” is the tricky bit here and it should be determined by a judicial process.
  • When a party wins an election, they should keep their manifesto pledges. At present, a manifesto seems to be a marketing brochure and nobody expects the commitments to mean anything. A manifesto should be more like a legally binding contract. Just today, Philip Hammond broke a conservative manifesto pledge  not to increase National Insurance. I understand that circumstances do change and some pledges may have to be broken. However, at risk of mangling an Oscar Wilde quote, to break one pledge is unfortunate. To break two is careless. Breaking three should be unacceptable and should automatically trigger a general election.
  • Anyone in public office who has clearly lied in their line of duty should be prosecuted for perjury. This would mean that George Osborne would be serving a 5 to 10 stretch at Her Magesty’s pleasure, rather than raking it in talking to wankers.

There are probably other things that could be put in place, but these simple rules would go a long way towards cleaning up politics.

Test Match Innovations

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It appears that the cricket authorities are finally waking up to the fact that Test Match Cricket is not in an entirely healthy state across the globe. The growth in the popularity of the short forms of the games has resulted in very low crowds for test cricket in some parts of the world. As someone who thinks that test cricket is the only important international form of the game, this is desperately bad news, but it has been building for quite some time. Personally, I am bemused by this. I am constantly told by commentators that the cricket fans in India are really knowledgeable, but all of the evidence suggests otherwise – they can only fill a stadium if the players are wearing pyjamas.

The only countries that clearly give a shit about test cricket are England, Australia and South Africa. It’s hard to be sure about Pakistan and the West Indies, but I am prepared to give the benefit of the doubt in both cases. Pakistan have been obliged to play outside their own country for so long that it is impossible to gauge the immediate popularity of test cricket at home. However, I find it hard to believe that a test match against almost any opposition in Lahore would fail to draw a full house. And, whilst the way that Pakistan play cricket does work in the short form, it works better in the longer form. Most all of the truly great Pakistan cricketers have been bowlers and test cricket is the only form where bowlers can be the stars.

West Indies is a harder case to argue. 20 years ago, WI fans were great value and test cricket was clearly what they cared about. More recently,when England tour, we buy a lot of tickets, especially at Barbados and completely skew the statistics. However, the pitches prepared for recent tours suggest that the authorities are more interested in 5 days of drunken tourist excess than a good cricket match. When other countries tour, the stadiums are empty.

Day Night Tests

in the last few years there has been  a big push for Day Night tests. The big blocker was the ball. Recent trials between Australia and New Zealand with a pink lacquered ball seem to have gone reasonably well. Fair enough. In parts of the world where dew is not an issue this seems like a reasonable idea. But, let’s  be clear on why the desire for day-night matches exists. It is because people are not prepared to give up a day of their annual leave in order to attend a day at the test match.

In some parts of the world this might work and I do not oppose the concept. In Britain, however, I think the idea is crap. We have dew issues throughout almost the whole of the year and this really would compromise the fairness of matches. Furthermore, in  Britain the suggestion is to resolve a problem that does not exist. Test matches are very well attended, thank you very much.

Joint Series

The latest bullshit idea to come from the ECB (you really would think Andrew Strauss would know better) is this idea of scoring across multiple formats to make up a series. What is worse, a test match is worth only twice the value of an ODI or T20 match. This means that in the current Sri Lanka tour of England, 12 points  are available for the 3 test matches, 10 points for the 5 ODIs and 2 points for the single T20. Bah! CricInfo even has a points table – what a nonsense.

A test series is a test series. You can combine the ODIs andT20s all you like – I don’t give a damn. But, combining test results with comedy cricket – that can’t be right. This was introduced for women’s cricket, where the semi-professional nature of the game means that only one test is possible. This is not the case in the men’s game. A test series should consist of at least 3 matches and it should stand on its own merits. The proliferation of 2 match series is not good news, but this summer at least, we do not have this problem.

If this is an attempt to make test cricket more “relevant”, then it is misguided. If, as seems more likely, it is an attempt to make people who care about test cricket care a bit more about pyjama cricket, then it is cretinous. Do not try to force me to care about the rubbish product by devaluing the real product. How dare you? Strauss – you should be ashamed.

 

 

 

Olympic Sports

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Many years ago, I had one of those post-pub, Men Behaving Badly style, drunken conversations with a couple of mates. Usually, such chats are forgotten as quickly as the kebab that preceded it, but in this case, it has stuck with me for years, and I think it is worth chronicling here as true wisdom. Dan & Pete – I think you were my correspondents in this case. If anyone ever pays me for this wisdom, I’ll ensure you get your share. I think you would be unwise to base your retirement plans on this promise, but who am I to dish out financial advice?

The conversation would have been as a direct result of our frustration at the amount of silly sports being celebrated at Barcelona in 1992, so that gives you an idea of how long these thoughts have been festering in my head.

What we eventually arrived at were a set of criteria that must/must not apply to a sport, before it could be included in the Olympics. My memory is far from perfect and I may well have coloured our decisions with my personal views. However, what follows would, I believe, serve the the IOC well. They are, of course, not interested in trimming the sports in their event, but they should be. Here are my guidelines…

 No activity that requires a judge, or panel of judges, to decide who won should be considered a sport and so should not be included in the Olympics.

This buys some easy points. Synchronised swimming is gone. No loss at all. Gymnastics, Diving and Ice Skating/Dancing also gone. Many people will mourn the loss of these events, but truly do you think it is acceptable for a panel of judges to say who won? It is one thing for a referee to ensure fair play, but subjectively deciding who has won brings us to the level of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Even more controversial will be boxing. You either change the rules to fight till knock-out, or you do not have a sport. Other martial arts and wrestling events will have similar issues.

Perhaps the most clear example of where judges are an evil force in sport is in the Ski Jump. Nothing could more clearly fulfil the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger”, except that in this case the dimension in question is further, as with the Long Jump or Triple Jump. But no! The morons in charge of this sport insist that distance is not the only factor. Points are also awarded for “style”. Imagine that in the 100m. Usain Bolt crosses the line first, but gets the bronze medal, because his closest competitors were deemed more elegant by a panel judges. Really? Ski Jumping must fix this or be banned.

No sport for which the Olympics is not the pinnacle of achievement should be included.

This seems to be increasingly relevant. For Athletics, Swimming and Track Cycling, the most important distinction is that of Olympic Champion, but we have had the problem of Football for many years. The “World Cup” is the global competition for football. Nobody gives a damn who wins the Olympics and most teams send junior representatives. Is that what the Olympics really wants? Drop it. The same can be said for Tennis and Golf, where the Grand Slams and Majors are what really matters. Even in cycling, no serious road cyclist would swap even a stage win at the Tour de France for an Olympic gold.

The IOC are forever trying to expand their event. Cricket T20, Rugby Sevens… forget it. Not interested.

No contrived sports should be considered.

What do I mean by contrived? Try these examples:

  • Walking. Why walk when you can run? Why not have a competition for backward walking or crawling on all fours?
  • Swimming other than freestyle. This is similar to the argument for Walking. Swimming, over various distances, is clearly a valid sport, but why have events for inefficient ways of swimming? Butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and any other way of getting through the water (doggy paddle, anyone?) are all fine, but only if they are faster than front crawl. If someone is so good at breast stroke that they can compete in the freestyle races, then let them. Presumably that’s why it’s called “freestyle”, rather than front crawl. Otherwise, tough: stop swimming like a dick and learn to swim properly.
  • Triple Jump. This is just silly. It belongs in a Monty Python sketch, not the Olympics. The UK has had some success in this event, but that does not stop it from being daft. Why not have a quadruple jump?silly walk

 

 

 

Pigeon Holes

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At some point during my lifetime, and it’s hard to pin down exactly when this was, it became necessary to define yourself in terms that should, by all reasonable standards, be utterly irrelevant.

Every 10 years, we get treated to a census. This gathers lots of interesting information that I’m sure does serve a purpose, but it also insists that we pigeon-hole ourselves.  In 2001 a lot of people rebelled against having to define themselves in terms of religion, by stating that they were followers of the Jedi religion. 390,000 people made this statement in England and Wales alone, making Jedi the 4th most popular religion in the UK, ahead  of the Sikhs, the Buddhists and Judaism. This may seem, and essentially was, a harmless piece of fun, but it does point to a frustration with a society that insists on these meaningless categorisations.

I flatly refuse to categorise myself in this way. Wherever possible, if I am asked for my ethnicity, I will respond with human, though even that feels a bit restrictive at times. Mammal, or even carbon-based lifeform – to borrow Douglas Adams’ excellent phrase – might be more appropriate.

Badminton Application

I recently applied for a Birmingham City Council leisure centre pass to allow me to book badminton courts. I’d like to say I’m getting a bit fat and I need some exercise, but it’s got way past that stage. Anyway, I am aware that councils are the worst offenders of all in this political correctness categorisation. I don’t really know why this is the case. There will be lots of people who will try to justify it, but it will all boil down to bullshit. Anyway, I mention this particular case, because the online form for the Birmingham Leisure Centres was a masterpiece of its kind.

Bear in mind that what I wanted to get out of this was the ability to book badminton courts. Here, alongside the usual name and address stuff, is what I was asked:

Gender

Options were:

  • Male
  • Female
  • Transgender

Not sure why this is relevant to badminton bookings, but essentially harmless. Rather boringly, I selected male.

Ethnicity Group

Options were:

  • Asian / Asian British
  • Black / Black British
  • Chinese / Other
  • Mixed
  • White / White British

This seems both strangely limited and self contradictory. For instance, when I look at a map, I’m pretty sure that China is in Asia, so why are they not considered as Asians, and why is there no “Chinese British” category. This seems frankly racist. Given these broad categories, what would someone from, say, Peru select? What tone of skin colour would tip me from white to black? I’m Welsh – mostly celtic – with dark hair and brown eyes. My skin colour varies depending on the time of year from a sickly pinkish to a pale brown, going through a brief period of bright red if I’ve seen too much sun. Where does that fit in the selection on offer, and more importantly, why the hell does it matter? I’m sure the dick that came up with these five categories expects me to select “White British”, but my skin is not white and I refuse to play this game.

I selected “Chinese / Other”, on the basis that whilst I am not Chinese, Other might encompass something with which I might feel more comfortable. Like “Human”, for example.

Ethnic Group

Having obliged me to select and “Ethnicity Group”, I was then obliged to choose and “Ethnic Group”. At first sight, these two things may seem to be very similar, but clearly, at least to Birmingham CC, one is a subset of the other. At this point the 4 broad but contradictory categories are broken down further, as follows:

  • Asian / Asian British
    • Afghani
    • Bangladeshi / British Bangladeshi
    • British Asian
    • Indian / British Indian
    • Kashmiri
    • Pakistani / British Pakistani
    • Other Asian

Again, I am struck by the contradictions. How come Bangladeshis, Indians and Pakistanis can be British, but not Afghanis or Kashmiris? I love the fact that one of the subsets of “Asian British” is “British Asian”. Other Asian is still a pretty broad category.

  • Black / Black British
    • Black African
    • Black British
    • Black Caribbean
    • Somali
    • Zimbabwean
    • Other Black

And there was me thinking that Zimbabwe and Somalia were in Africa. How silly of me.

  • Chinese / Other
    • Arab
    • Chinese
    • Filipino
    • Iraqi
    • Irani
    • Israeli
    • Kosovan
    • Kurdish
    • Middle Eastern (excluding Israeli, Iranian and Arab)
    • Vietnamese
    • Yemeni
    • Other Group

You’re seeing the nonsense without my commentary, but nevertheless, I feel obliged to pick out some of the biggest absurdities. Why Vietnam, but not Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore or any of the myriad of Asian countries that should have been listed in the Asia section, anyway? Why exclude just those three countries from the Middle East, but not Yemen or Iraq which are also explicitly listed?  And, if you are going to use alphabetical order to avoid any hint of favouritism, at least get it right.

  • Mixed
    • Asian and White
    • Asian and Black
    • Black African and White
    • Black Caribbean and White
    • Black and Chinese
    • White and Other Mixed

How on Earth did they arrive at this list? Was there a committee meeting to decide which ethnic groups might breed with others? What a load of bollocks!

  • White / White British
    • British or Mixed British
    • Gypsy / Romany
    • Polish
    • Traveller
    • Other White European (Including mixed European)
    • Other White

I travel. Does that make me a Traveller?

So after all that, I still have no idea what our Peruvian friend would select. Of more immediate concern to me, what should I select? On the basis that I had already selected “Chinese / Other”, I went for “Other Group” and my sub-selection. I really hope that does not preclude me from playing badminton.

Faith

So, having spent ages pondering my ethnicity, I now have to worry about faith. I’m not big on faith. To me it means belief without evidence. Again, I’m not sure why it matters in relation to badminton. The choices I was offered were:

  • Buddhist
  • Christian
  • Hindu
  • Jewish
  • Muslim
  • Rastafarian
  • Sikh
  • Other Religion
  • No Religion

I am dismayed to see that Jedi is not listed, given that the census of 2001 found it to be the 4th most popular religion in the country. Why have a census if you then pick and choose which parts to take seriously? Predictably, I selected “No Religion”. On the basis that several of the listed religions reject science and that the motion of the shuttlecock is highly susceptible to mathematical modelling, I hope that applicants from those religions will be rejected. I doubt, however, if this will be the case.

Sexual Orientation

Next, it appears that knowledge of my sexual preferences is vital in consideration of my application. Honestly, I promise never to indulge in any sexual activity on the badminton courts of Birmingham. Ever. The options were:

  • Bisexual
  • Heterosexual
  • Lesbian or Gay
  • Other

I went with other, as the mind was left boggling about what this might be. Bestiality?

Disabilities

Finally, I was asked about a series of disabilities, including:

  • Deafness or severe hearing impairment
  • Blindness or severe visual impairment
  • Condition limiting Walking, Lifting, Carrying etc
  • Learning/Cognitive Impairment
  • Long standing illness (Impacting day to day act.)
  • Long standing illness (Not Impacting day to day act.)
  • Mental Health Condition
  • Physical impairment
  • Sensory impairment

Do I really need to tell them about a mental health problem, before I’m allowed to book a badminton court?

I know this all seems incredibly far-fetched. In case you are prone to doubt, the form in questions can be found here.

Hope for the Future

The above frustrates the hell out of me, and I think it really adds to the segregation and institutional racism that still dogs our society. I have no doubt that the people who have put it in place intend well, but it is clear from the way that the questions have been structured that they are not particularly intelligent. I completely fail to see the need for such prying questions for a simple service. Noticing ethnicity and faith in such matters is inherently racist. I’m sure the council will state that they need to record these facts to ensure that all ethnic groups and faiths are treated equally. this is a specious argument. Being unaware of these facts is the only way to guarantee equal treatment.

On the positive side, racism in this country has reduced massively during my lifetime. the attitudes of my grandparents were so different to those of my sons. The current generation are much closer to being colour blind and I am truly hopeful that process will be complete in a couple more generations if only the jerks who create questionnaires like the one detailed above could stop doing so.